To Be, or Not To Be
by Don Sample
Summary: COMPLETE! Dawn gets a job offer from the SGC. Sequel to Misunderstandings
1. Prologue: The Key

**_To Be, or Not To Be_**

**Prologue: The Key**

The Key came into being during the instant of the universe's creation. Before there was time; before there was matter; before there was light; even before there was gravity. The Key was created at the moment when ten dimensional space-time cracked, giving birth the the four dimensional Big Bang from which everything else grew. The Key was a link back to the original ten dimensional omni-verse from which the universe was spawned, and from which new universes continued to be spawned. An ongoing process of creation, from which an infinite number of dimensions sprang.

The Key expanded and evolved with the universe. As the universe grew in complexity, so did the Key, until at some point—about four billion years after the Bang—it became aware. At first its awareness was rudimentary, its evolution was slow. It took another billion years for its first thought to really take form, and that thought was a very simple one: "I Am."

More thoughts came to the Key with increasing frequency, but they still happened incredibly slowly. Slowly enough that the Key was able to observe the universe as it expanded.

The Key was made from the most fundamental force in the universe. The other forces that came into existence during the Big Bang were only reflections of it, and the Key could sense and manipulate them all. It could sense the large whorls in space-time formed by the gravity of galaxies; it could sense the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and see the shining of stars; it could even feel the tiny interactions caused by the strong and the weak nuclear forces.

The Key watched the distortions in space-time as matter condensed to form stars and planets. Over time, it noticed that more and more complex patterns of the other forces forming in some of the smaller space-time distortions: it was seeing the initial sparks of life. It watched the sparks grow, and become brighter as life evolved, though it really didn't know that that was what was happening.

The sparks had a kind of beauty that intrigued the Key. They interacted with each other and their environments in an increasingly intricate dance. Sometimes the Key would try to join the interactions, but that almost always had unpredictable results.

Sometimes the Key's touch would extinguish the little sparks. The beauty of the universe was diminished, so it grew more cautious, learning the ways it could interact with the sparks that would not extinguish them. It learned the ways that it could encourage the sparks to grow brighter.

Then, on one tiny space-time distortion near the core of one of the larger whorls, something unprecedented happened: some of the sparks started to react in ways that showed that they were aware too. That had never happened before. The sparks had fleeting, ephemeral lives: winking in and out of existence in mere moments as the Key measured time. It had never considered the idea that they might have an awareness of the universe as well. The Key became even more cautious in its interactions.

More and more sparks started to appear as the universe expanded. Individual sparks barely lasted for any time at all, and their groups were nearly as transitory, rarely lasting for as long as it took for one of the galactic whorls to complete even a fraction of a revolution, but there were always new groups emerging.

* * *

Nearly fourteen billion years after the birth of the universe, some of the sparks started to do something new. They learned how to manipulate the primordial force—the one that was older than time, the one that made up the Key itself. These beings' experiments most often ended in disaster, bringing about the extinction of the race that conducted the experiments, and sometimes the complete destruction of their world, leaving nothing behind but a burst of gamma radiation that would puzzle astronomers on thousands of worlds.

On one small planet, near the fringe of a spiral galaxy, a race of hairless apes managed to survive its first experiments with the primordial force—which they called magic—largely because only extremely rare individuals were gifted in the use of it, and even their power was very limited. They did not lack intelligence though, so they were able to study and learn much about magic, even though their ability to manipulate it remained weak. A small band of these people became aware of the Key. They thought that if they could harness it, they could put its power to their use.

The Key did not experience time the way most thinking entities in the universe did. A million years could pass without its noticing, and the universe was vast, so it wasn't aware of what was happening until it was too late. The group of men who were to become known as the Order of Dagon had bound it. Its consciousness, which had once spanned the universe, was confined to a glowing green sphere, barely four inches in diameter. It lay trapped, unable to escape, as generations of men tried to harness its power.

Ten thousand years passed. Nearly any other thinking entity would have been driven mad by such a long incarceration, but the Key was older than time, and it was patient. It studied the men, while they studied it.

It had never before made such an intense study of the individual sparks of life. While its consciousness had spanned the universe, there had always been something to draw its attention away to something new. Now it was a captive audience. It learned far more about men than they ever learned about it. The men did learn a few things: they learned ways by which the Key could be used to force open portals between dimensions. They learned slowly though, since most of the men who succeeded in opening a portal were killed by it. The universe was vast, and mostly empty. Most random portals opened into vacuum.

And then one day, everything changed. The Key became Dawn Summers.


	2. Chapter 1: Job Offer

**Chapter 1: Job Offer**

Dawn Summers walked up the street in Oxford toward her apartment building, with a bag of groceries in her arms. She reached the entrance, and fumbled for her keys. She managed to extract them from her jacket pocket without dropping the bag. She opened the door, and went to the row of mailboxes to see if there was anything for her. She pulled several envelopes out of her box, dropped them into her grocery bag, and started up the stairs to her second floor flat. She grinned to herself: she had been in England too long, she was starting to think in Britishisms.

Dawn let herself into her flat, put the bag of groceries on the kitchen counter, and pulled out the mail. She started to flip through it: some junk mail, a couple of bills, a couple of envelopes for her flatmate, Joe, and two for her. One was a bit oversized, and the return address showed that it was from Xander, in Cleveland. It was addressed to 'Dr. Dawn Summers, D.Phil.'

She ripped the envelope open and pulled out a Scooby Doo birthday card. "Rappy Runty-Roar!" was written across the front of it, over a picture of Scooby in a party hat, and holding a cake with twenty-four candles on it. She opened the card to see what was written inside. Opposite a picture of Scooby—with the remains of the cake smeared across his face, and saying, "Rorry, I rouldn't rait!"—she recognized Xander's nearly illegible scrawl:

_Happy Birthday Doc!_

_Sorry I'm going to miss the party. Give everyone a kiss  
for me. (Except Giles—You can hug him for me, but any  
kissage will have to be from you alone. And oh, give  
Joe a good big brotherly glare from me, no hugs or  
kisses.)_

_Congrats on the degree. I knew you'd do it. Even the  
Mighty Giles bows before you when it comes to ancient  
languages. Be gentle with him, try not to make him feel  
too inadequate._

_The local Slay Gang all send their congrats too. Have  
fun, be careful, and remember not to look back: they  
might be gaining on you!_

_Love Xander.  
xxx 000_

Dawn smiled, and set the card on the shelf with the others that had come in for her over the last week. She looked at her other letter, and frowned. This one was addressed to 'Dr. Dawn Summers' too, but it wasn't from anyone she knew. The envelope looked very official, but she couldn't imagine why anyone from the U.S. Air Force would be writing to her. It had been over six years since she had met anyone who was involved with them. Sure, she'd sent Dr. Jackson a copy of her dissertation, partially because she had cited some of his papers in it (over the objections of her advisor) but she hadn't spoken with him since that last day on the island. She opened the letter.

_Dr. Summers:_

_We are in need of someone with your qualifications, for  
a classified project. I am unable to give you specific  
information about the nature of the work in this letter,  
but I will be in London from August 22, to the 29th and  
would like to arrange a time that I could meet with you._

_Please contact me at the number below if you are  
interested in learning more about this opportunity. I  
can say, that if you accept our offer, the work will be  
challenging, exciting, important, and may give you the  
chance to travel to some exotic locations._

_Col. Paul Davis, USAF_

Dawn's frown deepened. She had never heard of this colonel before, and she couldn't understand why the Air Force would want her. She thought back to the speculation that they had all done about what had brought Daniel, Jack, Sam and Teal'c to that island. They'd joked that the Air Force had been looking for aliens, but none of them had really believed it. She looked at the last line again. "Exotic locations?" she asked herself. "Nyah, he couldn't mean that."

She heard keys in the lock, and put aside the Air Force letter to properly glare at Joe as he came in the door. He saw the expression on her face, and looked puzzled. "What did I do?"

Dawn picked up Xander's card, and waved it. "Nothing. The glare was from Xander."

"Aw…and how is the old pirate?"

"Probably piratical," said Dawn. "So, everything's arranged?"

"Yep, we can pick up the van in the morning. So, what's for dinner?"

"I was thinking of ordering Indian tonight," said Dawn. "That good for you?"

"Yeah…but don't tell them you want it extra-hot this time."

Dawn went to the phone. "Wimp!"

"I like the lining of my mouth!" said Joe.

Dawn had been sharing the flat with Joe for two years now—ever since they had both started working on their post-graduate degrees—and they'd been sharing one bedroom for eighteen months. The second bedroom had been converted into a library/office that they also shared. Joe was fun: a good friend, and someone she could talk about linguistics and mythology with. He was also in training to be a Watcher, so she didn't have to hide that part of her life from him. They were leaving in the morning for the renovated manor house that was the new Watcher HQ near Westbury, that Dawn had come to think of as her permanent home, even though she hadn't spent more than six months there, over the last six years. Her things were almost all packed; Joe would be returning here, with one of the Slayers who would be starting classes at Oxford in a couple of weeks. They had decided to leave the moving of the heavy furniture—that would turn it back into a two bedroom flat—for the Slayer.

Leaving Joe was one of Dawn's regrets about her impending move, but the time had come for them to go their separate ways. They had both understood that this part of their relationship wasn't permanent. One or the other of them would be moving on eventually. She'd miss Joe being there for her all the time, but she knew he'd stay someone she could phone up to shoot the breeze with, any time she needed to have someone's ear to bend, and they would always be able to drop in on each other with minimal notice if they needed a place to crash for the night.

They finished packing Dawn's stuff into boxes that evening. There were a few disagreements over who some of the books belonged to, that got settled with a coin toss. They also polished off a couple of bottles of wine while they worked.

They went to bed before midnight, and made love like it might be their last time together…in that bed anyway. Dawn expected that they'd still have a couple more nights together over the weekend, before Joe came back here.

* * *

They awoke early the next morning, and after showering and dressing they went out to have breakfast at the little restaurant across the street from their flat. They played /Rock, Paper, Scissors/ to see which of them would go get their rental van, while the other stayed behind to start carrying down boxes. Dawn lost.

Joe gave her a quick kiss. "Be back in half an hour."

"You better be," said Dawn.

Dawn had most of the lighter boxes moved down, and sitting in the alcove just inside the back door of the building when Joe pulled the van into the alley. They quickly transferred that stuff into the van, and then went back up to the flat for the rest of it. It was nearly ten o'clock when they were done, and they climbed into the van for the hour and a half drive to Westbury.

* * *

Dawn honked the horn as she pulled the van to a stop in front of Watcher HQ. (She'd won the /Rock, Paper, Scissors/ to see who'd drive.) She was getting out when the front door of the house opened. Dawn recognized the first person who came out to greet them. Holly had been the youngest Potential who'd been called by Willow on the day of Sunnydale's destruction, and she was still one of the youngest of the Slayers. She was also the girl who would be going back to Oxford with Joe.

Six years ago there'd have been up to a dozen young Slayers living here, as all of the girls had rotated through Watcher HQ for their training, but now Holly was the last of them, and she'd be leaving in a couple of days. There were a few younger girls—new Potentials—who were in residence, and some of the older Slayers who still came back for refresher courses and to help train the Potentials, but it felt a bit like the end of an era to Dawn. They had changed the world that day. Seven years had passed, and the effects of Willow's spell were still echoing. Slayers used to have a life expectancy of about a year, but only a couple of Slayers had died in combat since that day in Sunnydale. No Slayer was ever "one girl in all the world" anymore; no Slayer went into battle alone. The Scoobies had kept Buffy alive for seven years on top of the Sunnydale Hellmouth, and she made sure that none of the Slayers who were called as a result of her decision that day ever went into a fight without similar backup.

The other big change was that no Slayer had to sacrifice her family, her friends, or her education, for her calling anymore. When Willow was finished digging through the resources of the old Council—getting control of their assets transferred over to the new administration—they had found that there was more than enough money to pay for a top notch education for all of the new Slayers and Potentials. The new Council provided every girl with a full scholarship to the educational institution of her choice, if she could meet the academic standards required—which meant that Slayers pretty much got into whatever universities they wanted: whatever power chose these girls, didn't choose stupid ones. Some of the Slayers from third world countries had needed a lot of remedial education to get them ready for it, but now the only Slayers who didn't go to university were the ones like Faith, who didn't _want_ to go.

Even Buffy had gone back to university, once things had settled down a bit. She had surprised nearly everyone by deciding to major in Education, though it made a certain amount of sense for the role that she had made for herself. She joked that she was the first Slayer to ever retire, but that wasn't really what she had done. She had moved on to take charge of the education and training of the Slayers who followed her.

Buffy, Willow and Giles followed Holly out of the house, and Dawn gave them their hugs and kisses from Xander. With everyone pitching in, all of her boxes were moved up to her room before it was time for lunch.

* * *

Dawn arranged to be alone with Buffy and Giles in the library after lunch. She felt the folded letter in her pocket, and looked at them nervously.

"What's bugging you Dawn?" asked Buffy.

"What?"

"There is obviously something that you want to talk to us about," said Giles. "What is it?"

"Um…nothing much," said Dawn, "it's just…"

"Spit it out," said Buffy.

"Umm…I've just been thinking about some stuff lately," said Dawn. "What I'm going to do next."

"I thought you wanted to be a Watcher," said Giles.

"I did," said Dawn. "I mean, it always seemed like it was the most important thing that anyone could do…you know…anyone who wasn't actually a Slayer. Helping save the world, and all."

"But now you don't want to help save the world?" asked Buffy. The smile on her lips kept the sting out of the question.

"I do!" said Dawn. "It's just, now… There's over a hundred Slayers now, all over the world, and we've got enough Watchers for all of them… You don't really need me."

"Dawn—"

"No, Buffy. I know I'm good at what I do. I know I've helped you a lot in the past, but I don't feel _needed_ anymore. We've gone seven years without a major apocalypse to avert. Vampires are almost extinct: at the rate we're going, in another year or two the only vamps left will be your ex-boyfriends. The only demons left are the ones that are smart enough not to kill people!"

"You've been training for a war," said Giles, "and now you've graduated, and the war is over."

"Exactly!" said Dawn.

"But it's never really over," said Buffy. "There will always be evil, waiting for us to drop our guard."

"I know." Dawn shrugged. "And if you ever need me, you know I'll be there for you, but I'm thinking that maybe…until that happens…I want to try something else."

"Like what?" asked Giles.

"I don't know, but I want to have a look around at other possibilities. I've been focused on becoming a Watcher so long, that I haven't really considered anything else." Dawn looked back and forth between Buffy and Giles. "I know that the Council has paid for my education, with the understanding that I'd—"

"Stop!" said Giles.

"But—"

"No!" said Giles. "You owe us _nothing_ Dawn. If anything, we owe you!"

"But—"

"You have been helping Buffy for ten years," said Giles, "and in that time, you haven't only helped to keep her alive, you have helped to save the world. All of the assets of the Council couldn't repay the debt that it owes to you."

"But it wasn't just me," said Dawn. "It was all of us."

"I know." Giles gave her an ironic smile. "The Council owes a lot of people more than all of its assets. You, Buffy, Willow, Xander, even Andrew…well maybe not _all_ of our assets for him."

"But I owe all of you too," said Dawn. "If not for you guys, Glory would have killed me."

"So we call the slate clean," said Buffy. "Our debts cancel out. You don't owe us, and we don't owe you, anymore than we owe, or are owed, by any of the other people we love." She leaned back against the library table. "So, was there anything specific you wanted to look at?"

Dawn pulled the folded envelope out of her pocket. "I'm not sure. I got this yesterday." She handed it to Buffy.

Buffy's eyebrows went up as she saw the envelope. "The Air Force? You planning to enlist?"

"Um…he doesn't say anything about me enlisting," said Dawn. "I think it's more like a civilian consultant deal. I also think it may have something to do with whatever Dr. Jackson and the rest of them were doing on that island six years ago."

Buffy quickly scanned the letter, before handing it to Giles. "You mean we might actually get to find out if those were alien spiders?"

"Maybe," said Dawn.

Buffy frowned. "I'm not sure that this is a good idea. We've had problems with the military."

"I know you got badly burned by the Initiative, but we've had good relations with some of them too," said Dawn. "Riley's teams helped us out a couple of times, and we've helped them."

"I know," said Buffy, "but every time we get involved with them, I get nervous. I trust Riley and his people, but I'm not sure if I trust the people he reports to."

"So you don't think I should do this."

"You're an adult Dawn. I think you should make up your own mind. I have some misgivings about this, but I won't tell you not to do it, not that it would do any good if I did."

"And I doubt if just talking to the man will create any hazard," said Giles. He handed the letter back to Dawn. "Even if you don't accept his offer, it could be useful to find out just what he wants from you."

"Right," said Dawn. "I guess I've got a couple of phone calls to make."

"A couple?" asked Buffy.

"Yeah, one to Colonel Davis, and one to Riley, to see if he's heard of this guy."


	3. Chapter 2: First Interview

**Chapter 2: First Interview**

Dawn was glad that she'd stopped making a habit of always carrying at least a knife with her, as she passed through the metal detectors that guarded the entrance to the American Embassy in London. They were monitored by Marine guards, who, despite their rather pretty blue and red dress uniforms, didn't look like people that Dawn wanted to make nervous.

She approached the reception desk, and waited her turn among the other people who had business at the embassy, all the time aware that she was under scrutiny from the guards, and video cameras.

She didn't make it to the receptionist. A young Marine in an olive service uniform approached her first. "Excuse me, Dr. Summers?"

"That's right," said Dawn.

He handed her a plastic card, on a chain. "If you would put this on, please, and come with me, Ma'am, Colonel Davis is expecting you." He gestured with his hand toward a side entrance to the main lobby.

Dawn looked at the card. She was a little surprised to see that it had a copy of her passport photo on it, taken a couple of years ago, before she'd cut her hair. It had "VISITOR" printed across it in large red letters. "Lead the way, uh…" She looked at the two chevrons on his sleeve. "…Corporal?" She put the chain around her neck. She wasn't sure how she felt about this boy—he couldn't be twenty yet—calling her "Ma'am." It made her feel old. She also wasn't sure how she felt about the fact that they had obviously taken some effort to prepare for her visit.

The corporal nodded, and led her across the lobby. "That's correct Ma'am, Corporal Turner." He reached the door, and swiped his own ID card through the reader beside it. There was a slight buzz as the electronic lock in the door released, and he pulled it open. He gestured for Dawn to go first.

The door led into a corridor that was much more utilitarian than the embassy's entrance lobby. Corporal Turner took Dawn down it to an elevator that also needed his card to access. They went up to the fourth floor, and down another hallway. They stopped in front of a door, and Corporal Turner knocked on it.

"Enter!" said someone inside the room.

Corporal Turner opened the door, and stepped through it first. He braced to attention in front of the desk. "Dr. Summers is here, Sir."

Dawn had followed the corporal through the door, and saw a man in an Air Force uniform rising from behind the desk. "Thank you, Corporal. That will be all." He came around the desk and extended his hand to Dawn while the corporal exited the office, closing the door behind him. "Pleased to meet you, Dr. Summers. I'm Colonel Davis."

Colonel Davis was handsome, about forty years old, with a bit of grey starting to appear in his close cut, dark hair. Dawn shook his hand. "Hello, Colonel."

Davis gestured to the chair in front of his desk. "Please, sit down."

Dawn sat in the offered chair, while Davis returned to his own. "So, what is this about?" she asked.

"I'm afraid that before I can tell you very much, you're going to have to sign a non-disclosure agreement." Colonel Davis picked up a folder, and passed it across to her.

Dawn read over the paper in the folder. It looked like a fairly standard version of similar agreements she'd had to sign in the past, to get an advance look at some of her colleagues' research, and things like that, but she was reluctant to sign the one being handed to her without knowing _anything_ about why she was doing so. She set the folder down on the desk. "I'm sorry Colonel, but I think I have to know something about what you want from me, before I can agree to this."

"I can tell you a few things first." Colonel Davis grinned at her. "The work we want you for should have nothing to do with demons, Slayers, or any of the other usual interests of the Council of Watchers."

Dawn wasn't surprised that Davis knew about that. She'd talked to Riley, and he'd told her that he'd had dealings with Davis in the past. Davis worked for a department in the Pentagon that handled 'the weird stuff.' Though Riley had never reported directly to him, Davis had been present at many of his post-mission debriefings. He also told Dawn that Davis had been involved in the Shetland Island matter, six years ago.

Riley had also told Dawn a couple of other things about the work that he thought Davis did, even though he didn't really know anything about it: he knew the cover story. "So…does it have anything to do with Deep Space Radar Telemetry at Cheyenne Mountain?" she asked.

Davis's grin expanded into a smile, and he held out a pen to her. "Sign the agreement, and you'll find out."

Dawn watched Davis for a moment. He looked a bit like a little boy with a secret that he wanted to share. Something really juicy that he expected to surprise and delight the person he was about to reveal it to. Dawn shrugged, and took his pen. She signed and dated the document.

"Yes," said Davis. "If you accept our offer, you will tell people that you are working on the DSRT project at Cheyenne Mountain."

"What will I really be doing?" asked Dawn.

"You are familiar with Dr. Jackson's theories about the construction of the pyramids," said Davis.

"Yes," said Dawn. "I even referenced some of his papers in my own dissertation, over the objections of my advisor."

"Dr. Jackson's theories were much closer to the truth than even he believed at the time," said Colonel Davis.

"So aliens really did visit the Earth in the ancient past?"

"Several times…and also in the not so ancient past. In fact, there are some here now."

"Like Teal'c," said Dawn.

"Yes, but he's not really an alien. His ancestors came from Earth. That's one of the reasons why we need linguists specializing in ancient languages. There are a lot of people out there, whose ancestors were taken away from the Earth in the past. We need linguists to be able to talk with them."

"So, when you said I might travel to exotic locations in your letter, you really meant other planets?" asked Dawn. "How?"

"I'm afraid that I can't answer that question for you at this time," said Colonel Davis. "If you join us, you will find out, but the ways and means by which that happens are among the most closely guarded secrets in the government."

Dawn smiled at him. "So, you've really got some alien spaceships hidden away in Area 51?"

Colonel Davis didn't say anything, or even smile back. He just looked at her.

"No way!" said Dawn. It really was too bad that she'd just promised not to talk about this with anyone. Andrew would freak.

"If you join us, you'll find out." Colonel Davis did grin now. "And then you won't be able to tell anyone about it." He tapped the folder that had the non-disclosure agreement in it, and his grin vanished. "I have to warn you that before you learn any specifics, you will have to sign more documents, and then if you reveal what you learn to anyone without the proper authorization it won't be the sort of civil action that signing that document made you liable for. The charge would be Treason."

That gave Dawn pause. Whatever this was, if she agreed to it, could change her whole life. She was used to keeping secrets, but they were the sort of secrets that were enforced by her loyalty to her friends, not the full weight of the American government. "So, um, you're not asking me to enlist or anything like that?"

Colonel Davis shook his head. "No, nothing like that. You will be a civilian employee of the Air Force: just another civil servant."

"It's still a lot to think about," said Dawn. "This is a change in my whole life."

"I know," said Colonel Davis, "and I don't expect you to make a decision right away. In fact, before you make any sort of final decision, there are some more people you'll have to talk to."

"Is one of them Dr. Jackson?" asked Dawn.

"Yes, it is," said Davis. "He's a bit busy right now, or he'd have been here himself to talk with you. As it is…" He pulled a small folder, like for an airline ticket, from a drawer, and passed it across his desk to her. "These are vouchers for airline tickets, good for flights from London to Denver, and back again. We'll also cover your expenses for a rental car, hotel, meals and such, while you're there."


	4. Chapter 3: Second Interview

**Chapter 3: Second Interview**

Dawn drove her car along the road that led up Cheyenne Mountain. It was a beautiful September morning, and she had the top down in the blue convertible that she had managed to rent. The view was spectacular in places along the highway, and the wind was warm in her hair.

Signs warned her that she was approaching the security gate for NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain Complex, and she slowed her car. She came around a sharp bend, and she saw the gate. She joined the short line of cars waiting to be admitted. The guards on the gate were not rushing to let anyone in, but they were working quickly and efficiently. Everyone had to show their ID, and every car got inspected to make sure that there was no one hiding in the back seat, or in the trunk, or anything like that. A couple of soldiers, with dogs, were moving up and down the line. The dogs were giving each car a good sniff as well.

Dawn was ready when her turn came. "Good morning Ma'am," said the guard. "Please state your business, and may I see some identification please?"

"Good morning." Dawn handed over her passport. "Dr. Dawn Summers. I have an appointment to see Dr. Daniel Jackson."

The guard looked at her passport photo, and then back at her. He took another good look at the passport, and Dawn wished that she had some photo ID that had a more recent picture on it, at least one that had been taken _after_ she'd had her hair cut.

After a couple more looks, the guard seemed to be satisfied that Dawn was the person in the photo in the passport. "Could you open your trunk please Ma'am?"

Dawn smiled at him. "It's open." She had gone looking for the trunk release as soon as she'd seen that the cars ahead of her were being searched.

A second guard was moving around behind her car, and he opened the trunk to look inside it. He closed it again, after a brief inspection, and reported that it was clear to the guard on the gate. He also closed the gas cap cover that Dawn had managed to open while looking for the trunk release.

The guard had found Dawn's name on his electronic clipboard. He handed it to her, along with a stylus, and indicated where she should sign. Dawn did so, and handed back the clipboard and stylus. He handed back her passport. "Thank you, Dr. Summers." He pointed as he gave her directions. "If you drive straight ahead, and then follow the signs to Visitor Parking, and Registration, on the left, someone will meet you there."

"Okay, thanks." Dawn slipped her passport back into her purse. The gate opened in front of her, and she drove slowly forward.

There were lots of signs to make sure she didn't get lost, and enough armed guards to make her think that she might get shot if she did wander into some place where she shouldn't be. More signs informed her that the guards _were_ authorized to shoot. She found a parking space in the visitor section, and entered a building through a door with a sign that read "Visitor Registration" over it. Half an hour later she did have a picture ID that had a recent photo on it. She had also been fingerprinted, had her retinas scanned, her DNA sampled, and signed the documents that informed her that if she revealed any of what she was about to see or hear to anyone who was not authorized to know it, she could be charged with Treason.

Dawn handed the last of the documents she had signed over to the airman who had been guiding her through the process. "So, when do I actually get to see some of these things that I can't tell anyone about?"

"Soon Ma'am," said the airman. "They're sending someone to escort you down." He pointed her toward a row of seats. "If you'll have a seat, they'll be here soon."

Dawn was surprised to recognize her escort when she arrived. She heard her voice before she saw her. "Hello, Airman. I hear you've got a Dr. Summers waiting here to visit us." Dawn looked up from the pamphlet of security regulations that she'd been given to read, and saw the familiar form of Samantha Carter talking with the airman. She was wearing an Air Force uniform though, this time.

"Yes, Ma'am," he said. "She's right over there." The airman pointed Sam in Dawn's direction.

Sam smiled as she came over. "Dr. Summers. Good to see you again." She held out her hand toward her.

Dawn stood, and shook her hand. "You too, Major Carter."

Sam tapped a finger against her silver eagle rank insignia. "It's Colonel Carter now. If you're going to come to work for us, you're going to have to watch for insignia."

"Right," said Dawn. "So the guy with the stars is the boss?"

"He likes to think so," said Sam.

"Is it your habit to send colonels to escort in the new recruits?"

"No, I just happened to be on my way in myself, so I got diverted to escort you." Sam nodded toward a security checkpoint. "Come on, I'll show you the way."

* * *

Sam took Dawn through the security checkpoint to a bus that took them into the tunnel that led deep into Cheyenne Mountain. They weren't alone, so they passed the time by Sam telling her about the history, and construction of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex: created to be a stronghold against a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. Cheyenne Mountain's mission had evolved over the years. It still held one of NORAD's two command centres, monitoring the entire world for any sign of a ballistic missile launch. They also tracked everything larger than a BB in Earth orbit, and monitored the airspace in and around North America for any aircraft that might be flying without a properly filed flight plan.

After leaving the bus, they passed through the huge blast doors, and Sam took Dawn through more security checkpoints to elevators leading deeper into the mountain. Dawn was glad that she wasn't claustrophobic, but she still found the thought of all the rock over her head to be rather daunting. Sam took her through yet another security checkpoint, to an elevator that took them farther down.

They were finally alone in this one. The panel looked a little strange to Dawn, with the numbers going up as you went down it. Sam pushed a button near the bottom, for level 27. The elevator started down.

Sam looked at Dawn. "So, I've been meaning to ask you: _were_ those demon spiders on that island?"

Dawn laughed. "I'm supposed to ask you if they were alien spiders."

They didn't have time to discuss it further. The elevator stopped, and someone else got on. He nodded a greeting to Sam, and pushed the button for level 28. Dawn and Sam remained silent for the rest of the elevator ride.

The elevator stopped on level 27 and the doors opened. Sam led Dawn out into a grey corridor. The air smelled a little stale: the odour of machinery mixed with that of people. They moved through corridors mostly filled by people in uniforms. Even the few non-uniformed people that Dawn saw had a military look to them. She was a little surprised that not all of the uniforms were American. She hadn't been surprised to see a few Canadian uniforms in the upper sections that contained NORAD, but down here there seemed to people from half a dozen different countries: some that would have given NORAD's founders heart attacks if they'd seen them inside one of their most secure facilities.

Sam opened a door. "In here." She waved Dawn through it.

Dawn went through the door into a conference room. At least this room wasn't grey: the walls were beige. There was a table that could easily seat a dozen people in the centre of it. There was a spiral staircase in one corner that led up, and another stairway leading down. One wall was covered by glass windows that had metal shutters closed over the outside of them. On another wall was a crest, with the letters 'SGC' emblazoned on it. She had seen a similar patch on the shoulders of many of the people in uniform, but so far no one had told her what the letters stood for.

There were two people seated at the table, and Dawn recognized the one who was rising to his feet. Daniel Jackson held out a hand toward her. "Dr. Summers. Good to see you again." He was looking a little older now, and was starting to get a few grey hairs, but she still thought that he looked pretty good.

Dawn shook his hand. "Nice to see you too, Dr. Jackson."

"Please, call me Daniel."

"And I'm Dawn."

Daniel let go of her hand. "Dawn Summers, I'd like you to meet Dr. Elliot Hayes." He held his hand out toward the other man in the room. "Dr. Hayes is the head of our linguistics department," said Daniel, "If you come to work for us, he will be your immediate supervisor."

Dr. Hayes rose, and shook her hand too. "A pleasure to meet you Dawn."

Dawn smiled. "You too…Elliot."

Daniel shot Sam a look. "Demons?" he mouthed to her. Sam just shrugged in response. Dawn could see that Dr. Hayes hadn't missed the by-play, but he seemed to be puzzled by it, which told her that he hadn't been told about the events that had brought her into contact with Sam and Daniel in the past.

Daniel smiled at Dawn, and gestured toward the table. "Why don't you have a seat, and we can begin."

Dawn picked a chair across the table from where Daniel and Elliot had been sitting, and sat down. "So…care to tell me what this is all about?"

Daniel sat back down in his seat. He slid a binder across to her. "It's about this." Dawn looked at it, and saw the title of her dissertation on the cover. "Even if you hadn't sent me a copy, and I hadn't met you already, _this_ would have caught our attention," said Daniel.

Dawn looked at her paper: _Tracing a Legend: A Philological Study of the Gould Legends Among the Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Indian, and Chinese Cultures_. She had combined her minor in mythology with her major in linguistics when she wrote it. Tracing several legends, in various languages back to a common root. One 'legend' of demons known as the Gould. She looked up from the binder, and saw the expressions on the faces of the people in the room. A seriousness that didn't match the looks she got from other linguists, who appreciated her work as a clever bit of assembling the pieces of a puzzle. It was the look of people who knew that that solution to the puzzle could be of deadly importance. "You know about the Gould."

"Goa'uld actually," said Daniel. "They're an alien species, not demons, but other than that, the core legend that you reconstructed is one of the best descriptions of the Goa'uld occupation of the Earth that I have ever encountered."

"Aliens," said Dawn. "Um…you're saying that the Goulds were aliens?"

"Yes," said Daniel. "The Goa'uld are an alien species that first came to Earth thousands of years ago, and enslaved much of the human population, before they were driven off. They still exist, and much of the galaxy is still under their control."

Dawn listened as Daniel, Sam, and Elliot told her about the Goa'uld. She had thought that she was prepared for anything, but learning that there were _real_ aliens out there among the stars who knew about the Earth, and wanted to conquer it, was a lot to take in. It was hard to wrap her mind around it. Now, the idea of demons wanting to conquer the Earth she was used to, but aliens? She wondered if any of the other demons she had read about, or encountered, were really aliens too. There had been that Quellor demon that had come to earth in a meteor when she was fourteen.

* * *

"So, if you people are Earth's first line of defence against the aliens, why are we buried half a mile under a mountain?" asked Dawn.

"It's just about time for you to see why, Dr. Summers."

Dawn turned toward the voice she had heard behind her. "Jack!" She saw Jack O'Neill coming across the room toward her. He was wearing an Air Force dress uniform, and her eyes went to his shoulders. She saw the two stars on each of his epaulets. "Uh…I guess I should call you General now."

Jack smiled at her. "We're pretty informal here. Anyone who's been through a fight with me, can call me 'Jack.'"

"I didn't really do much," said Dawn.

"There are half a dozen images that pop into my head, whenever I'm reminded about that damn island," said Jack. "One of them is you, holding a sword, with one of those damn bugs quivering on the end of it." Jack shook his head. "And for some reason, another is a herd of rabid ducks." He shook his head again, harder, as if trying to shake that image loose. "The important thing was that you kept your head, under circumstances that would make most people run screaming. You impressed me."

"It wasn't that big a deal," said Dawn.

"Yes it was," said Jack. "Nine out of ten people would have frozen, or run screaming. You didn't do either. And once the initial crisis was over, most of the last one in ten would have fallen apart, but you immediately set about helping tend to the wounded."

"You should have seen me after we got back home," said Dawn. "I still have nightmares about giant spiders."

"So do I," said Dr. Jackson.

"Me too," said Colonel Carter.

General O'Neill raised his hand. "It's unanimous. I see a spider these days, and I want to reach for my gun."

Dawn felt the hairs at the back of her neck start to stand up. A feeling that something was about to happen. A klaxon started to blare, and red lights started to flash. A voice announced "Off-world activation!" over a speaker.

"What's that?"

Jack glanced at his watch, and grinned. "Right on time. That, Dr. Summers, is the answer to your question about what we are doing buried under a mountain." He picked up a remote control off the table and pressed a button on it. The shutters covering the windows on the side of the conference room started to rise. Jack gestured toward them. "Take a look."

Dawn got up from her seat and moved to the windows. They looked down into a large room, the floor of which was about fifteen feet below her. The walls and floor of the room looked like they were concrete, and painted the same grey that most of the corridors were painted. The centrepiece of the room was a large ring, about twenty feet across. It was standing vertically, and made up of two segments. The outer ring was stationary, and there was another ring spinning inside of it. As Dawn watched, the inner ring stopped spinning, and a triangle on the outer ring lit up. The inner ring started to rotate again, until another triangle on the outer ring lit.

As each triangle lit up, the feeling that Dawn had inside her that _something_ was happening grew. She knew in her core that she would be feeling this even without hearing the alarms, or seeing the spinning ring. She also felt like she had heard, or read, about something like this before. "The Chap-pie!" she whispered. "You have the Gould Chap-pie!"

"Uh…yeah," said Daniel. "But it's pronounced 'Chappa-ai.' We just call it the Stargate."

"It creates a stable wormhole between itself, and another Stargate, on another planet," said Sam, "allowing nearly instantaneous travel across the galaxy."

A platoon of soldiers took up positions in the room below her, all pointing their weapons at the ring. Dawn saw that most of them had some sort of gun, but others were armed with staffs like the one she had seen Teal'c carrying, while others had the smaller weapons that she still thought of as "bug zappers." More soldiers manned some larger weapons that were permanent fixtures in the room below.

The seventh triangle lit up. Dawn felt something like a mild electric shock pass through her body as she saw what looked like a horizontal splash of water surge out away from the ring. It fell back into a vertical pool that glowed with a blue light in the centre of the ring.

"IDC received!" said the voice from the speaker. "Incoming travellers are SG-8!"

Dawn saw people start to step out of the pool of light. The first few were soldiers, followed by a couple of men who were dressed more like civilians, and not carrying any weapons. Two more people stepped out of the pool, and Dawn recognized one of them: it was Teal'c. The man beside him was dressed in strange clothes, carrying a staff like Teal'c's, and had the same symbol on his forehead, but he looked older. He was wearing a skull cap, and had a beard shot with grey. The pool of light winked and vanished, and the centre of the ring was empty again.

General O'Neill spoke into a microphone. "Defence team, stand down! Welcome home SG-8, and welcome back to Earth, Master Bra'tac!"

The older man beside Teal'c looked up toward them, and nodded. "An honour to be here, as always, General O'Neill."

Dawn saw that Teal'c was looking up toward her, and he smiled. She smiled back, and gave him a little wave.

"SG-8, report to Medical!" ordered Jack. "Debrief at 0930!"

Dawn glanced at her watch: 0930 was half an hour away.

"Everyone returning from off-world has to go through Medical," explained Daniel, "to make sure that they haven't brought back anything unpleasant with them." He grinned at her. "They're lucky. It used to take longer."

"What about the guys with the guns?" asked Dawn.

"They're just in case any of the less than friendly aliens out there managed to compromise our team, and learn their IDC code," said Carter.

"But something like a Gould could still be hitch-hiking with them."

"That's one of the things that Medical is going to be looking for," said Jack. "They will be under guard until they've been cleared. Colonel Carter and I have some work to do, before SG-8's debrief, so we'll let Elliot and Daniel give you the tour."

* * *

Dawn found herself outside of Stargate Command's medical centre twenty-five minutes later. Now she knew what SGC stood for. She had been shown the control room, and the gate room. She had even walked up the ramp, and felt the Stargate itself with her hands. She hadn't mentioned it to the others, but she felt drawn to it. There was something about it that called to her. If any of them had noticed her reaction to it when it had activated, they weren't mentioning it to her, either.

The people Dawn had seen arrive through the Stargate were just leaving the medical centre. She smiled when when she saw Teal'c again. "Hi Murray!"

The older man with Teal'c raised his eyebrow, and looked at him. "Murray?"

Teal'c nodded to him. "It is a Tau'ri name that I sometimes use outside of the SGC. It was how I was first introduced to Dawn Summers." He turned back to Dawn. "Everyone here knows me by my true name: Teal'c." He nodded to the man beside him. "This is Master Bra'tac, leader of the Free Jaffa, and my teacher."

"Nice to meet you, Master Bra'tac." Dawn held out her hand to him.

"Dawn Summers is a scholar, and a promising young warrior," said Teal'c as Bra'tac shook her hand.

Dawn tried not to blush. "I'm not, really."

"Don't sell yourself short," said Daniel. "A Doctorate from Oxford at twenty-three is quite an accomplishment, and we've seen you in a fight."

"Indeed," said Teal'c.

"I have a high regard for the judgement of Daniel Jackson, and Teal'c," said Bra'tac. "You should listen to them."

"Yeah, but I'd look like I've got a swelled head if I agreed with them too quickly," said Dawn.

Bra'tac smiled at her. "Wisdom beyond your years, as well. Good day, Dawn Summers." He turned and accompanied Teal'c and the others away down the corridor.

Daniel waved his hand in the general direction of the departing people. "Um…I have to get to the debriefing too. I'm going to have to leave you with Elliot for the rest of the tour. I'll see you later."

"Okay, thanks for showing me as much as you have," said Dawn. "I know you must be busy."

Daniel left, and Dawn turned back to Elliot. "So, what's next?"

"I'm afraid that the next item on our agenda is to let the nice people in Medical have a look at you," said Elliot.

"Really? Why?"

"A couple of reasons," said Elliot. "First of all, we like to make sure that all our people are in top health, and second, we need to have a good baseline to compare against for when you come back from off-world." He showed Dawn through the door. "Dr. Fraiser, I have a new victim for you!"

A woman about Dawn's age, in a white lab coat, with a stethoscope around her neck approached them. Her light brown hair was drawn back into a pony-tail. "Hi, Elliot. So this our newest recruit?"

"Not 'recruit,' recruit," said Dawn. "I'm not joining the army, or anything like that."

Dr. Fraiser smiled at her. "Relax. I'm a civilian too."

"Dawn, this is Dr. Cassandra Fraiser," said Elliot. "Latest addition to our medical staff."

"I just started myself," said Dr. Fraiser. "Elliot, why don't you give us a little privacy?" She took Dawn over to one of the beds, and drew a curtain around them.

"You and Dr. Hayes seem pretty friendly, for someone who just started here," said Dawn.

"Oh, I've known Elliot for years," said Dr. Fraiser. "Now take your blouse off, please."

Dawn started to unbutton her blouse. "So, how did you meet?"

"My mom used to be the Chief Medical Officer here," said Dr. Fraiser. "The SGC is kinda the only family I have, now." Dawn could hear the sadness in her voice, and knew that there was something Dr. Fraiser wasn't saying about that. Fraiser put her stethoscope into her ears, and moved the other end toward Dawn's chest. "Now take a deep breath."

Dawn spent the next hour getting one of the most thorough medical examinations of her life. In addition to poking, prodding, thumping, listening, and taking blood samples, Dr. Fraiser gave her a full body MRI scan, and interviewed her about her medical history, childhood diseases, the status of her vaccinations, and whether there was any history of illness in her family.

The exchange of information wasn't just one way. Dawn found out that Dr. Fraiser had lost her mother too, just a few years ago. She didn't say exactly how it had happened, but Dawn knew that it had something to do with an SGC mission. It was at about that time that Dawn stopped calling her Dr. Fraiser, and started to call her Cassie. She also learned that Cassie had just graduated from medical school a few months earlier, and was doing her internship at the SGC.

Cassie also took note of Dawn's many scars. She looked carefully at the faint parallel lines that ran across Dawn's sides at waist level. "So, what happened here?"

"Uh…I had an interesting childhood," said Dawn. "It's classified. I'm not supposed to talk about it." She figured that that answer would do, for someone as junior as Cassie.

Dawn had just finished putting her clothes back on when Cassie opened the curtain again. "Okay, the low tech portion of your physical is over. Now comes the high tech part."

Dawn raised her eyebrows. "Low tech?" Most of the instruments that Cassie had used on her were pretty modern. The MRI scanner was something that she'd only seen on TV science shows about the latest new thing.

"Yeah, we've got some toys here that are out of this world…literally." Cassie took Dawn into another room that had a pair of raised circular platforms, each about three feet in diameter and six inches off the floor, in the centre of it. She pointed to the one on the right. "Step up there, and hold still." She moved over behind a control console.

Dawn stepped onto the platform. "So, what's this do?"

"Full body scan, right down to the molecular level." Cassie pushed a couple of buttons and Dawn saw a 3D image of herself appear over the second platform. Cassie twisted a knob and the image started to turn.

"Neat!" said Dawn, and she saw her image appear to speak along with her.

"It gets neater." Cassie twiddled with more controls and first Dawn's clothing, and then her skin vanished from the image. More layers were stripped away, until just her skeleton remained. It vanished too, and was replaced by the network of Dawn's circulatory system: her heart, arteries and veins. Cassie zoomed in on her heart, and Dawn could see it beating.

"Looks healthy," said Cassie.

"Hey, they keep telling me I got a lotta heart."

"You're the fourth person this week to use that one." Cassie adjusted the controls again, causing Dawn's other organs to be displayed.

"So, if you've got this fancy…whatever it is, why did you bother with all the other stuff?" asked Dawn. "This shows way more than any MRI could."

"This is new, alien tech, and we don't really understand how it works yet," said Cassie. "We like to be able to compare what it tells us with what our own instruments say. Plus, General Jack has a real distrust of nearly everything off-world, especially the stuff we don't understand. He's been bitten too many times."

"'General Jack'?" asked Dawn.

"Oh, I'm the only one here who calls him that. I've known him since I was a kid. Of course he was only 'Colonel Jack' back then. Anyway, we'll be comparing the data we got from this, with all the other data we collected the old fashioned way, to make sure that this thing isn't lying to us."

A light started to flash on Cassie's console. "Okay, we're done."

"So, what all did this thing do?"

"Lots of stuff. The main scan is just down to a cellular level, and it was finished almost instantly. That's what we've been looking at here. We have a full recording of everything every cell in your body was doing for a couple of minutes, to make sure everything is working right. Then the machine took a random sample from a few thousand different cells, and did a full DNA sequence on them, and recorded that too." Cassie pressed another button, and a green crystal popped out of the console. She picked it up. "It's all recorded in here. Enough data to actually make another you…your body anyway."

"You can do that?" asked Dawn. "Sounds creepy."

"We can't, but some of the aliens we've met could do it," said Cassie. "The General has managed to have himself copied a few times, which is one of the reasons why he made us make real sure that this thing couldn't copy memories."

"You're sure about that?" asked Dawn.

Cassie held up the crystal. "_These_ we do understand—well, Sam and a few people like her understand them anyway. The new petabyte solid state computer memories are based on the same technology. Nearly every bit of storage capacity in this crystal is full of the data that we know about. There isn't _room_ in them to load your memories too."

Cassie turned Dawn back over to Dr. Hayes. He took her on a tour of the rest of the facility. Dawn saw a confusing array of offices, gymnasiums, armouries, visitor accommodations, isolation labs, physics labs, and other things. It didn't help that all the corridors looked the same. Everything was painted the same shade of grey. The only way to tell them apart was by reading the letters and numbers painted on the walls. She was sure that she wouldn't be able to find most of the things she had been shown again, without help.

One room he showed her he called the 'Situation Room.' There was a board on one wall that showed the status of each of the SG teams. Dr. Hayes explained to Dawn how each team had an "SG" designation, and how different teams had different specialities: first contact teams, geology teams, archaeology teams, diplomatic teams, a couple of companies of Marines, and other things. Dawn saw that the board started with SG-2, and went all the way to SG-50, with various statuses displayed for them. Some were off-world, some were on stand-by, and some were on stand-down. The off-world teams had their departure, expected return, and next scheduled check-in times marked, as well as other bits of information. Each of the teams also had a national flag displayed beside it. Most of them were American, but she saw that there were Russian, Chinese, British, Canadian and French flags there as well.

"So, why is there no SG-1?" she asked.

"Aw, they're kind of a special case," said Elliot. "They were our first team, and the lead team for a long time, but they're no longer active, as a team, but we decided not to give their designation to anyone else."

"What happened to them?"

"Well, General O'Neill is in command of the base. Colonel Carter is in command of SG-2, which is now the lead first contact team, Teal'c commands SG-3, and Dr. Jackson is the head of the Cultural Sciences Division…which is comprised of linguistics, history, archaeology, and anthropology departments."

"So what was Teal'c doing with SG-8?"

"SG-8 is a diplomatic team, and they are engaged in talks with the Free Jaffa, so Teal'c, being a Jaffa himself, is also involved with them. You met Bra'tac. He's one of the leaders of the Jaffa, and he was Teal'c's mentor, for many years."

The last place Elliot showed Dawn was the commissary. It was nearly lunch time, and she was starting to get hungry. "So, how's the food?"

"Not bad," said Elliot, "but you won't find out for yourself today."

"I won't?" asked Dawn. She was feeling really hungry.

"You have been invited to dine with the General."


	5. Chapter 4: An Awkward Lunch

_Note: This chapter contains spoilers for the penultimate chapter of "**Too Good to be True**," story ID: 2053412) so if you aren't reading that, now might be a good time to do so._

* * *

**Chapter 4: An Awkward Lunch**

Elliot guided Dawn back down to the conference room on level 27. She saw that General O'Neill, Colonel Carter, Dr. Jackson and Teal'c were all waiting there for her. There was a tray of sandwiches and a box of doughnuts on the table, and a selection of drinks. The General smiled at Dr. Hayes. "Thank you, Elliot. That will be all."

"Uh, yes Sir." Dr. Hayes looked rather disappointed that he was being excluded from this lunch, but he didn't argue the point. He smiled at Dawn. "See you later."

Dawn smiled back, and waved as he backed out the door, and closed it behind him. She turned nervously back to the group around the table. This was the first time that she had been alone with any of them, other than her brief elevator ride with Sam, and she could see that they were eager to talk with her, even though they were holding themselves in check. Even the unflappable Teal'c was looking at her expectantly.

They weren't going to start grilling her right away though. General O'Neill waved his hand at the plate of sandwiches. "So, help yourself."

Dawn looked over the selection. There were several different types of sandwich available, including vegetarian, peanut butter and jam, and ones with different varieties of meat. She selected a roast beef on whole wheat, and a bottle of grapefruit juice. "Thank you." She sat down and took a bite out of her sandwich. "Umm…good. I was getting hungry. My stomach is still on British time."

Jack and the others picked out their own sandwiches. "So, what do you think of our little facility?" he asked.

Dawn swallowed another mouthful before she answered. "Impressive…the colour scheme is a little monotonous though."

"Yeah," said Jack. "We hear that complaint a lot. Trouble is, anything else upsets the Marines. They complain about the Air Force wusses inflicting pansy-assed colours on them."

They talked about other inconsequential things through lunch. Dawn felt very much like they were all avoiding talking about a large, purple elephant that was sitting at the table with them. The talk finally swung around toward the elephant as she was licking the sugar from the jelly doughnut she'd had for dessert off her fingers.

"So, how's Buffy?" asked Sam. "She recovered from the bite okay?"

"Oh, yeah," said Dawn. "She heals fast."

"And how about Willow?" asked Daniel. "She was looking pretty done in, there at the end too."

"No problem. She just needed a good sleep. Uh…how about Jerry? He wasn't looking too good, last time I saw him."

"He made a full recovery," said Jack. "Well…almost."

"Almost?"

"He was left with a major case of arachnophobia. We finally had to put him on permanent assignment off-world, on P5J-975."

"P5J-what?"

"It's a world that doesn't have any spiders."

"Oh. I wonder if it's anywhere near the world without shrimp."

"What?" asked Jack.

"Never-mind," said Dawn. "Family joke. You couldn't give it a name people could remember?"

Sam leaned forward. "Gates on other worlds are given designations, based on the binary—"

"Carter! Give it up!" said Jack. "You've explained that to me a hundred times, and it _still_ doesn't make any sense." He turned back to Dawn. "Worlds that we have a lot of dealings with have names, but most of them just have a number."

"What of Xander Harris and Rupert Giles?" asked Teal'c. "They are well?"

"Uh…yeah, everyone's fine," said Dawn. "Xander's living in Cleveland now." She could see that no one was the least bit surprised by that. She suspected that she hadn't told anyone anything that they didn't already know.

Daniel looked a little nervous about what he was about to say next. He used a finger to push his glasses up his nose. "So…about Buffy and Willow…"

"What about them?" asked Dawn.

"Well, they both did some pretty amazing things on that island."

"Yeah, they did."

"And we were kinda wondering _how_ they did them," said Jack.

Dawn had known that the question was coming, and she'd spent a lot of the last couple of days thinking about how she was going to answer it when it came. She had also discussed it a bit with Colonel Davis. "General O'Neill—"

"Jack! I said to call me 'Jack!'"

"General O'Neill," repeated Dawn. "I have given my word not to discuss certain matters with anyone. If I can't be trusted to keep my word to my friends, and family, can you trust me to keep your secrets from them?"

"How can we trust you, if we know you're keeping secrets?"

"I won't lie to you, Sir. I will tell you what I can. If you ask me something I can't answer, I'll tell you I can't answer it. There are people in the government who do know about Buffy and Willow. If you aren't happy with what I can tell you, you might try asking Colonel Davis."

"The SGC is charged with protecting the Earth from a variety of threats," said Jack. "We need every tool at our disposal to accomplish that."

"Buffy and Willow are not _tools_, Sir." Dawn let a little anger creep into her voice. O'Neill was sounding a bit like the old Council.

"No, of course not," said Daniel quickly. "Jack didn't mean it that way."

"What did he mean?"

"I meant, that sometimes we need all the help we can get," said Jack, "and having the help of someone like Buffy or Willow, might make the difference between us winning or losing. And if we lose, the whole world loses."

"Buffy and Willow are already doing their parts, in that department," said Dawn. "There are other threats to the Earth. Not just the extra-terrestrial ones."

"The vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness," said Daniel.

Dawn gave him a sharp look. "You know about that?"

"I know about the legends," said Daniel. "In every generation, there is a Chosen One. One girl in all the world…"

"…in all the world," joined in Dawn. "She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. Yeah, I've heard it."

"So, Buffy is the Slayer," said Jack.

Dawn paused for a moment before she answered. If they'd figured that much out, there wasn't much point in denying it. "Yeah, Buffy's a Slayer."

"_A_ Slayer?" asked Daniel. "There's more than one? The legends all seem to be pretty specific on the 'only one' part."

"No comment," said Dawn.

"And what about Willow?" asked Sam. "Is she a Slayer too?"

"No," said Dawn. "Willow is…Willow."

"Those things she did," said Jack. "I've seen Goa'uld doing things like that, with their ribbon devices, but I couldn't see what Willow was using."

"She wasn't using anything," said Dawn. "What Willow does…she does herself."

"I'd love to be able to study—"

"No!" Dawn cut Sam off. "Military and magic are non-mixey things! Last time the military got involved in magic, they almost destroyed the world."

"Would that be that Initiative thing you guys were so interested in?" asked Daniel.

"Uh…yeah," said Dawn.

"But the military is still involved in that stuff," said Jack. "Major Finn, and his outfit."

"Riley knows his limits," said Dawn. "They hunt down and kill demons that are causing problems, and they've got some magic users who support them, but they know when to call for help, too. Other than habits, habitat, and how to kill it, they don't do much studying of demons."

"Are demons really that common?" asked Daniel.

"Oh, sure," said Dawn. "But most of them like to keep a low profile. I haven't had a chance to check out Colorado Springs, yet, but I know that there are a few in Denver. I doubt if there are many around here though. Demons like to avoid the military. A lot of them remember the Initiative too."

"So, about those spiders," said Jack. "Sam said you didn't think they were demons."

"Uh…not any sort of demon we've come across before," said Dawn. "We couldn't find any reference to anything much like them."

"But they couldn't have been natural insects," said Sam. "No insect could be that big. It just doesn't work."

"Maybe they were alien demon spiders," said Daniel.

"Or spider alien demons," said Dawn.

"Demon spider aliens," said Jack.

Dawn decided they'd milked that one for all it was worth. It was time to see if she could get a little information out of the SGC people. "What about Latvia?"

"Huh?" asked Jack.

"When Daniel first called us, he said that someone had found something in Latvia, like the site in the Shetlands. What was that really?"

"Uh…P3G-823," said Daniel. "There was a ruin there, with inscriptions in the same language."

"And the first survey team there was killed," said Jack.

"More spiders?" asked Dawn.

"No," said Daniel. "It was some sort of force field. Everyone exposed to it died."

"What about the 1992 expedition?" asked Jack. "Did the spiders get them?"

"Not as far as we could tell," said Dawn. "According to Giles, everyone was just dead. No marks at all on their bodies. They couldn't tell what killed them."

"Sounds like P3G-823," said Daniel. "But what stopped it? Carter estimates that the field there grew to nearly a thousand miles in diameter. No non-native life can survive inside it. Why didn't that happen here? Why isn't half of Europe dead?"

"The Slayer," said Dawn. "The Slayer went to that island, and stopped whatever was happening."

"How?" asked Jack.

"We don't know," said Dawn. "She died doing it."

"Damn!" said Jack. "Wish we knew what she did. 823 would be a nice world, if it wasn't for the fact that anyone who went through the gate to it would drop dead."

They sat quietly for a moment, no one knowing what to say next. Daniel broke the silence. "Your dissertation makes some references to more recent appearances of 'Gould' demons."

"Yeah," said Dawn. "The last confirmed one was in 1734, in Tibet."

"Really?" asked Daniel. "Do you know which one it was?"

"It was calling itself 'Kansa.'"

"The Hindu king of the demons," said Daniel. "Supposedly killed by Krishna."

"Well, Kansa got away from Krishna, and went into hiding for a few thousand years," said Dawn. "Apparently he decided that Krishna wasn't a threat anymore, started trying to raise a new army of demons to be king of."

"What happened to him?" asked Sam.

"The Slayer killed him," said Dawn.

"Any after that?" asked Jack.

"There's been some rumours," said Dawn. "One guy seems to be pretty good at hiding. Shows up about once a century as the head of a cult, and then vanishes again, before the Slayer can get close. The last time was just a few years ago in Washington, but he disappeared again before the old Council could get its thumb out of its ass."

"Really?" asked Jack. "Does he have a name?"

Dawn looked at the expressions on their faces. They seemed to be looking pretty smug. "He calls himself 'Seth.'"

Jack grinned. "You don't have to worry about him, anymore. _We_ kicked his ass."

"You're sure?" asked Dawn.

"Oh yeah," said Daniel. "What was that you said about the 'old' Council? That implies that there's a 'new' Council…"

* * *

Dawn managed to escape from the lunch without spilling too many more secrets. She spent the afternoon getting introduced to the linguistics staff. She was very impressed. She had recognized the names of several of them, from having read their work in various journals. She was somewhat awed by the prospect of getting to work with so much talent.

It was nearly six when she got back to her hotel. That made it after midnight, British time, and she really wanted to go to bed, but she knew that if she went to sleep now, she'd be awake again at two in the morning. If she wanted to adjust to Colorado time, she had to stay awake for a few more hours. Seeing the two people waiting for her in the lobby of the hotel told her that staying awake wouldn't be a problem.

"Rona!" Dawn hugged the black Slayer who had risen to her feet on her entrance. "Good to see you again!" She hugged the second girl too. "You too, Gabbie!"

Rona was one of the Sunnydale survivors, and she and Gabbie, one of the Slayers called by Willow's spell, were responsible for covering the USA, between the Rocky Mountains, and the Mississippi river. They were based in Denver, to keep an eye on its small demon community, but they moved around a lot. In the winter months they could usually be found near a ski hill, if there weren't any demons that needed Slaying.

Dawn let go of Gabbie, and stepped back. "So, what are you guys doing here?"

"Buffy called," sad Rona. "Told us you'd be here. Asked us to check out the area."

Dawn had given up on being annoyed by Buffy's overprotective tendencies. She had come to accept that she would always have her sister, or some other Slayer, nearby to keep an eye on her, no matter where she went. She grinned as a new thought struck her: maybe she'd be able to escape through the Stargate. "You find anything?"

"Not much," said Rona. "There is a Jade Dragon in town, though."

"Oh good!" said Dawn. "I'm hungry!" The Jade Dragon was a chain of Chinese restaurants, run by a clan of demons that went back at least a couple of thousand years. Some of them had worked in the kitchens of the Ming Emperors, and their food was always excellent, especially if you knew to tell them to make sure that they left out the cat that they served to their demon customers.

Dawn let Rona drive to the restaurant. She was so tired that there was a real danger that she'd end up on the wrong side of the road. Even though she had a current Ohio driver's license that she had gotten during one of her many visits to Cleveland, she had learned to drive in England.


	6. Chapter 5: Settling In

**Chapter 5: Settling In**

Dawn tacked a poster up on the wall of her new office, trying to add a little colour to the place. It was a picture showing the estate that had become the main Watcher HQ in Westbury. She stepped back and whispered the words to the spell that would activate it. The picture shimmered to life.

The poster was a gift from Willow. It was like looking out a window that showed what had been happening seven hours ago at her home. The seven hour delay was so that the time shown in the picture was the same as the local time at Cheyenne Mountain; Dawn could've made it show a live picture, by speaking a slightly different spell, but then it would be dark half the time she was in her office. She stepped toward the poster for a closer look. The illusion was perfect: it was like she had a hole in her wall that she could look out, without even the slight interference that would be caused by a plate of glass. She could see Buffy leading a couple of Potentials through their morning exercise routine in the back garden. They looked so real that she almost wanted to shout and wave to them.

Dawn smiled, and felt a little smug. Here she was, half a mile underground, and she had the only office in the place that had a window to the outside world. Even the window in General O'Neill's office just looked out into another underground room.

She moved on to the next item of 'decoration' for her office. She started to attach the brackets to the wall from which she would hang her second-best sword. That sword had caused her a lot of trouble when she brought it into the Mountain. The guards had passed most of the personal items she brought in with her with only a slight glance. She had brought in some of her own books, pictures of Buffy and the Scoobies for her desk, her 'poster' for her wall, and the sword. The guards had really balked at her bringing that into the base. It had taken several phone calls, working her way up her chain of command, first to Dr. Hayes, then to Dr. Jackson, and finally to General O'Neill himself, for the guards to pass her sword. And then the guards at the next checkpoint had balked as well.

She had finished hanging the sword, and tested to make sure that she could draw it quickly if she needed it—others might think that it was just a piece of eccentric decoration, but Dawn thought of it as an essential weapon—when there was a thump on her door.

"It's open!" she called: a nice non-invitation invite for whoever was outside to come in. Even if a vamp didn't need an invitation to get into her office, not inviting unseen people through doors was a long ingrained habit.

"Uh…my hands are kinda full," came Elliot's voice through the door.

"Oh!" Dawn opened the door, and saw Elliot in the hall, holding a stack of books. "Come on in." She stepped back to let him through. He came in and dropped his stack of books on her desk, beside the stack of her own books. "Sorry, things are still a bit disorganized in here."

"We give the new people a _little_ time to get settled in," said Elliot. "Inspection isn't until 0900." He saw Dawn's startled expression, as she checked her watch. "Kidding! The civilian staff would revolt if we made them have inspections. You've seen Dr. Jackson's office. As long as you keep yours neater than it, no one can complain."

"I guess I won't have to worry, then," said Dawn. "So, what do you have there?"

Dr. Hayes took the top book off the stack. "Basic Goa'uld vocabulary, and grammar text." He set it down on her desk, and picked up the next one. "Asgard." He kept going through the stack. "Furling, Ancient, a rather peculiar form of Sumerian, spoken on P3X-2243…and a bunch of others." He pointed toward the computer on her desk. "They're all available on-line, as well, but I still prefer real books."

"Me too." Dawn picked up a book off the stack and looked at it. "Spent too much time in the company of a librarian over the last decade."

Dawn saw that Elliot's attention had drifted to the poster on her wall, and she quickly checked to make sure that it had reverted to a plain, flat, image, the way it was supposed to when anyone else entered her office.

"Nice picture," said Elliot. "Where is it?"

"Westbury, England," said Dawn. "It's kinda my home."

"Nice place to grow up."

"Oh, I grew up in L.A., and Sunnydale, California. We only moved to England after Sunnydale turned into a hole in the ground."

"Oh, I heard you were from Sunnydale," said Elliot. "What was that like?"

"It was different," said Dawn.

"Were you there for the collapse?"

"Uh…yeah."

"That must have been amazing to see."

"Yeah, it was pretty amazing, but I was mostly just wishing that the bus would move faster."

"Move faster?" asked Elliot.

"Yeah," said Dawn. "I was watching out the back window, seeing the street collapse behind us. I was the last person to get out of Sunnydale alive."

Elliot suddenly lost his eager look. "Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. It must have been terrible for you."

"It's okay," said Dawn. "It was a long time ago."

Elliot could tell that she didn't want to talk about Sunnydale. "So, what's that place?" he asked, indicating the picture again.

"That's kind of a school, that my sister runs, now" said Dawn. "I was actually in Oxford, for most of the last six years."

A brief silence fell. Elliot turned back to the books on her desk. "Well, once you've settled yourself in here, you can start to work on familiarizing yourself with these languages. We like to have everyone have a basic knowledge of Goa'uld. You might want to take a look at the Ancient too: it's close to Latin, which you already read, so you should be able to pick it up fairly quickly."

Dawn picked up another one of the books, and flipped through its pages. "Okay, so what do I do _after_ lunch."

Elliot grinned at her. "Don't worry, we'll give you a couple of weeks before we expect you to read Goa'uld. After lunch you get to meet Master Sergeant Callahan. You're lucky: we're just starting a new prep-class for civilians who are in line to go off-world."

* * *

Dawn looked around at the other civilians that surrounded her in the gym. She and Cassie were the only women in the group. They were accompanied by half a dozen men. She recognized a couple of them from her section, but she hadn't gotten the chance to get to know any of them yet. Most of them looked out of place, like they didn't think that they belonged here. Part of her agreed with that assessment. They _didn't_ look like they belonged. Some of them looked like they had never lifted anything heavier than the Oxford English Dictionary. Her attention moved to the man in a Marine uniform who had just entered the gym through another door. _He_ looked like he belonged here. He looked like he belonged in any damn place that he thought that he belonged.

"Alright! Listen up!" the man called out. "I am Master Sergeant Callahan! You may call me 'Master Sergeant!' Do you understand me?"

There was a mumbled response to his question.

"I can't hear you!" said Master Sergeant Callahan.

The response this time was louder, but still a confused mixture of. "Yes, Master Sergeant"s, and "Yes, Sir"s.

"First lesson!" said Master Sergeant Callahan. "Only officers are called 'Sir.' Enlisted personnel are addressed by their rank! Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Master Sergeant!" called out nearly everyone. Dawn worked hard to keep the smile off her lips.

"Better," said Master Sergeant Callahan, but he didn't really sound satisfied with their response. Dawn felt that if they were really military, and not a bunch of civilians there for a basic introductory course, that Callahan would have really reamed them out.

Callahan started to stalk, back and forth, in front of them, with his hands clasped behind his back. He'd take half a dozen steps before he would turn, and start back in the opposite direction. "Alright, people! You are all civilians, and we don't intend to even try to turn you into soldiers. We have lots of soldiers already. It takes years to train a soldier properly, and I don't have years to work with you! I am here to teach you how to work with soldiers, and give you the basics for how to handle weapons safely, so that you are not a hazard to yourselves, and everyone else within a few hundred yards, if, God forbid, any of you should ever find yourselves with a rifle in your hands. You will also be taught some of the basics of unarmed combat…mostly just to show you how much you don't know.

"We aren't planning to send any of you into combat, but we have learned from harsh experience that sometimes, some of our civilians will find themselves trapped in a combat situation. So I am going to teach you how to behave if you find yourself in such a situation. The most important thing that you are going to learn, is how to follow orders! If the shit hits the fan while you are off-world, your survival, and the survival of all those with you, will depend on how well you obey the orders given to you by the soldiers who will be with you.

"Make no mistake! If you find yourselves in combat, then you are going to have to follow the orders of soldiers! The lowest ranking private in the SGC knows ten times more about combat than any of you, and if the shit hits the fan, you _will_ be expected to carry out the orders of privates. Their job will be to keep you alive, and if you don't follow their orders, they won't be able to do it!

"You will also learn the basics of wilderness survival. Many of the worlds that you may go to have little or no civilization on them. You will be camping, and it isn't the sort of camping where you've got an RV with a nice shower, and a toilet! This will be 'dig your own latrine' camping.

"But first, and foremost, we are going to get you into shape! Good physical conditioning will be the number one factor in keeping you alive! So with that in mind, we're going to start out with a little run…"

* * *

Dawn sat on the bench in the women's locker room to tie her shoes. "Well, we survived the first week."

"I'm not so sure," said Cassie. "I think I need to go die now."

Master Sergeant Callahan had spent the week running them all into the ground, pushing them all to the point of exhaustion. It took longer for some of them, than others. A few of the guys had been rather embarrassed by how poorly they had performed, especially when it quickly became apparent that both Dawn and Cassie were in better shape than most of them.

It hadn't done them much good though. Master Sergeant Callahan wanted to see what everyone had, which meant that he had just pushed Dawn and Cassie harder than the rest.

Dawn looked up at Cassie. "So, does that mean that you're too tired to show me where any of the fun clubs are in town tonight?"

"What did you have in mind?" asked Cassie.

"Oh, just some place where we can meet some guys, do a little dancing, that sort of thing."

"You think you can go dancing, after what Callahan did to us?"

"Well, not right now," said Dawn, "but give me a couple of hours to rest, and have dinner, I'll be good to go. Come on! It's Friday night!"

"You may have the weekend off, but I've got to report back at noon tomorrow."

"So, I won't keep you up past midnight," said Dawn. "Maybe we could talk a couple of the guys into going with us. That's one nice thing about working here: no shortage of guys who are in good shape."

Cassie grinned at her. "Maybe for you, but most of the guys on the base are afraid to date me. General Jack has a real deadly glare whenever he notices someone taking what he thinks is too much interest in me."

"So, I guess we'll have to find some place where no one knows your 'uncle' is a General," said Dawn.

* * *

Dawn finished making the last touch-ups on her makeup, and went out into the main room of her new apartment. There were still boxes stacked up around the room: boxes that she had packed from her flat in Oxford, and still hadn't unpacked. She hadn't stayed at the Council House long enough to get settled there before she had moved again.

She heard a knock on her door. She went and looked through its peep-hole, and saw Cassie waiting in the hall. She unlocked and opened the door. "Hey Cassie, come on in." One of the first things she had done after moving into this apartment was replace the peep-hole with a little gadget that Andrew had invented. It was sort of a mini-periscope, with mirrors so you couldn't see vampires through it. Anyone you could see was safe to invite in.

Cassie stepped across the threshold, and looked around. "Nice place." Her eyes settled on the sword in its brackets on the wall near the door. "What's with you and swords?"

"I just like to have them around," said Dawn. "They make me feel safe."

"You aren't one of those immortal guys are you?" asked Cassie.

"Nyah," said Dawn. "But I wish I could figure out how they managed to carry those swords around without anyone noticing them. The longest blade I've been able to hide that well without wearing a trench coat is only about eighteen inches."

Cassie's eyes moved up and down, looking for a place where Dawn might be hiding a weapon. Dawn was wearing tight fitting slacks, and a red silk blouse.

"Don't worry, I'm not carrying tonight. Even an eighteen inch blade needs more clothes to cover it that what I've got on." She grabbed her jacket and put it on. "Now come on, the guys await!"


	7. Chapter 6: Into the Gate

**Chapter 6: Into the Gate**

Dawn was starting to regret her decision to join the SGC. She had spent a couple of months here, most of it cooped up in her office, translating documents brought back from off-world by others. Some of the documents contained vital information: such as the crop yields on a planet that had been obliterated by the Goa'uld three hundred years ago.

The training sessions were fun. Survival training had included several weekend camping trips. They got to practice various emergency scenarios in the relative safety of the Colorado mountains. On one trip, after leading them on a ten mile hike up a canyon trail, Master Sergeant Callahan had declared himself a casualty, and they had to carry him back down the way they had come up. There were some narrow sections of the trail, where a misstep could lead to a nasty fall, that took some ingenuity to come up with a way to safely transport him across.

The weapons and combat training had been a snap for her. Buffy might never come to like guns, but she knew that they were something that the Slayers were likely to come up against, so all Slayers and Watchers were trained in how to handle them. Dawn had never handled a P90 before, but she had experience with other automatic weapons. She also got to fire Jaffa staff weapons, and zat'nic'atels…which she repeatedly annoyed Master Sergeant Callahan by calling "bug zappers."

Dawn's survival training had culminated with her being dropped off by a helicopter in the middle of the Colorado wilderness. She was allowed to take anything she happened to have on her when a pair of SFs had come to take her from her office, was given a pack with basic supplies in it, and told that civilization could be found fifty miles to the east. They gave her a radio, told her to check in frequently, and told her that she could use it to call for a pickup—but if she did that, she would fail the exercise.

Dawn had come out of the bush, onto a highway, three days later. She had tried hitchhiking back in to Colorado Springs, but no one seemed to be interested in picking up someone who looked as filthy as she did by that point. One of the motorists who passed her by did call 911 though, so she got picked up by a cop a little later. The police had been told to be on the lookout for her, so they gave her a ride back to Cheyenne Mountain.

After that experience, Dawn went back to her old habit of always carrying a few things with her. The guards came to know her as 'the girl with the knives.' The DSRT people were known among the Cheyenne Mountain guards as the most unusual bunch in the Mountain, and with the knives on top of the sword incident, Dawn was coming to be known as one of the weirdest of the weird.

Her friendship with Cassie had grown, but they didn't get many opportunities to socialize away from work. Their schedules rarely meshed, with Dawn mostly working a normal nine to five shift. As an intern Cassie's schedule was much more erratic. She often had to work 24 hour shifts, and when she was done, all she wanted to do was go home to sleep. Dawn had also started to form a few friendships with some of the other linguistics staff, and she had found a couple of soldiers that were good sparring partners, to keep her fighting skills honed.

She had actually managed to impress Master Sergeant Callahan with how well she could fight. He didn't have a very high opinion of most of the so called "martial arts" and he hadn't been impressed when she'd first told him that she had a black belt in jiu-jitsu. Master Sergeant Callahan didn't think of fighting as a "sport" and he didn't think much of anyone who did. Real fighting was quick and dirty, and the only rule was to incapacitate your opponent before they could do the same to you.

Fortunately, Dawn had learned to fight using the same philosophy, and many of her training partners had been Slayers whom she couldn't hope to match in strength or speed, so she'd had to learn how to be sneaky. She had nearly managed to beat the sergeant, the first couple of times they had sparred together, and after that he had been delighted to recommend a couple of his marines who were in her weight class, that he felt could use a good drubbing.

* * *

It was another Monday. Dawn was immersed in the translation of yet another ancient text that contained nothing more interesting than a report about the trial of a man accused of stealing sheep. She heard a knock, just before lunch, and looked up. Dr. Hayes was standing in her open door. "What is it, Elliot?"

"They want you in the briefing room. ASAP."

"What is it?""

Elliot grinned at her. "That would be telling."

Dawn took the elevator down to level 27. The SF on the conference room door opened it as she approached. She stepped through it, and stopped.

She recognized everyone seated at the table: General O'Neill, Teal'c, Dr. Jackson, and Colonel Carter. She also recognized the rest of SG-2: Ry'ac, Teal'c's Jaffa son; and Lieutenant Phillips, a former Navy SEAL. She felt a whir of hope and fear.

SG-1 had set the pattern for the first contact teams. Four people: a physical scientist, a special forces officer, a Jaffa expert on the Goa'uld, and a cultural scientist. Everyone knew that SG-2 was looking for a new cultural scientist. SG-2 burned through them, the way Sunnydale had burned through magic shop owners. They'd had a series of them assigned to them over the last few years, and none of them had lasted very long. The good news was that it had been a couple of years since one had been killed. The bad news was that the last archaeologist that had been permanently assigned to their team was still in the hospital. Mostly they took whatever specialist they felt was best suited to the current mission.

Dawn pulled herself into a semblance of attention, and addressed General O'Neill. "You wanted to see me, Sir?"

"Yes, Dr. Summers. Take a seat." Jack gestured toward a vacant chair at the table. "Dr. Hayes tells me that you're our best person, when it comes to Sumerian."

"Well…uh…I've been reading it since I was sixteen," said Dawn.

"Great!" said Jack. "That's good! 'Cause we need someone who reads it." He pressed a button on the remote he was holding and the lights dimmed. An image formed on the screen against the wall.

Dawn looked at the cuneiform displayed on the screen. "Oh great and mighty Ba'al," she read. "Protect us from the sky-gods. Make our crops flourish. Make our cattle be fertile. Yadda, yadda, yadda." She looked at Jack. "Usual religious posturing."

"Well, Ba'al has been a pain in our ass for several years now," said General O'Neill. "This was clearly one of his worlds once, but now it seems to have been abandoned. We're hoping that the reason why will give us something that we can use against him. SG-2 is shipping out this afternoon. I want you to volunteer to go with them."

Dawn thought about it for less than half a second. "I'm in."

* * *

Dawn was feeling considerably less certain a few hours later. She stood in the gate room, surrounded by Colonel Carter, Ry'ac, and Lieutenant Phillips. She shifted her pack on her shoulders, as if trying to get more comfortable, but that wasn't what was really bothering her. The Stargate was shimmering before her, and she could feel it calling to her. She still hadn't told anyone that she could feel the gate. Every time it opened, with either an incoming or outgoing wormhole, she knew it. If she was in the base, it was like an electric shock through her system, but even when she was at home in her apartment in Colorado Springs, she felt a tingle. But this was the first time that she had been in the gate room itself, while the gate was active.

Dawn felt drawn to the gate, like it was her purpose in life to go through it. She watched the shimmering pool of light as first Ry'ac, and then Lieutenant Phillips vanished into it. She heard Colonel Carter move up behind her.

"Let's go." Sam placed a hand on Dawn's shoulder, and pushed her gently toward the gate. They walked up the ramp together.

Dawn hesitated for a moment at the top of the ramp, looking at the pool of light a few inches in front of her face. Something told her, deep down, that this was her destiny. She took a deep breath, and was about to take the next step, but Sam beat her to it. She grinned as she gave Dawn the same initiation to gate travel that Colonel O'Neill had given her, fourteen years ago, and was now something of a tradition for first time gate travellers with SG-2: Sam pushed Dawn into the wormhole.

Dawn Summers ceased to exist.


	8. Chapter 7: What Happened?

**Chapter 7: What Happened?**

Buffy had just gone to bed when she felt it. Something had happened to Dawn. She didn't know how she knew it, but she did. She sat back up on the side of her bed, and picked up her phone. She dialled Dawn's home number, and got her answering machine. She thought about the time difference, and dialled the number she had for Dawn at work. She listened to the message saying that Dawn would be out of her office for a few days, and giving the extension numbers for people to talk to, if the matter was important.

Buffy cut off the message, and dialled Willow.

* * *

"What do you mean, 'she just vanished!'?" asked General O'Neill. SG-2 was back from P5C-4562 way ahead of schedule. They had nearly set a new record for the quickest turn around time in SGC history.

"She just vanished, Jack!" said Colonel Carter. "I stepped through the gate right after her, and she wasn't there! She was gone when I got to the other side!"

"What happened to her?"

"I don't know!" said Sam. "She just vanished!"

"Could this be like what happened when Teal'c got trapped in the gate?"

"No," said Sam. "I was right behind her. I entered the gate after she did, and I still arrived on P5C-4562. She vanished somewhere between the demolecularization entering the gate's event horizon, and the remolecularization on the other side. And look at this!" She pointed to the pile of clothing, the pack, and other things on the conference room table. "She disappeared right out of her clothes!" She picked up the sword. She had kidded Dawn over the way she had insisted on taking it. "Her second best sword is still here! It's impossible! And I'm the one who pushed her!"

"You can't blame yourself for this Colonel!"

"I pushed her into the gate, Sir, and she's gone!"

"She had already started to take that step herself, Colonel. You just hurried her along a bit. Whatever happened had nothing to do with you pushing her."

* * *

General O'Neill looked around his conference table at the end of the week. Several unhappy faces looked back at him. "Okay, what do we know?"

"There was a massive power surge in the gate when Dr. Summers entered it," said Colonel Carter. "The Alpha Site's gate registered a power surge at the same time. We've contacted the Tok'ra, and the Asgard, to see if they noticed anything, and they both reported similar surges. As far as we can tell, _every_ Stargate recorded a power surge at the moment that Dawn Summers entered ours."

"Does anyone have any idea what could have happened to her?" asked Jack.

"Everyone we've talked to tells us that this is totally unprecedented," said Carter. "The Tok'ra, the Asgard, even the Nox."

"The Nox talked to us?" asked Jack.

"The Asgard talked to the Nox, and relayed their reply back to us," said Daniel. "They seem to be just as anxious to get an answer as to how this could happen as we are."

"And whatever caused that power surge seems to have done something else to the gate network," said Carter. "DHDs have been malfunctioning, sporadically, ever since it happened."

"Has anyone else disappeared?" asked Daniel.

"No, nothing like that," said Carter. "It's just that gates don't connect sometimes when you dial. Punch in the address, and nothing happens."

"Have we lost contact with any worlds?" asked Teal'c.

"None," said Carter. "Whatever the problem is, seems to be intermittent. Dial the same address again, and the gates connect just fine. It seems that all the DHDs capacity is being taken up by something else, but whatever it is shuts down for a while, if someone tries to use a DHD, and it fails. There haven't been any reports of permanent malfunctions."

"Of course, if their DHD stopped working altogether, then they might have trouble reporting that it wasn't working, now wouldn't they?" asked Jack.

"A lot of worlds have the means to communicate, independent of their gates, Sir," said Carter. "We've even got our own small fleet of interstellar capable ships now. And no one seems to have dropped out of touch."

"How about our Dialling Computer?" asked Jack.

"It seems to be just fine," said Carter. "Whatever is affecting the DHDs doesn't seem to be affecting it." Jack thought that she sounded rather proud of that. The original kludge that had been the Dialling Computer had been upgraded so many times over the years that Sam now boasted that it worked _better_ than a DHD. Every problem that they'd had with it in the early years, where they got into trouble because the DC did something that a DHD wouldn't, had been a learning experience. The current DC was just as fast, and had a similar computing capacity to a DHD, but it gave them much finer control over the gate. They could still push the envelope in ways that a DHD didn't allow, only now they had a much better idea of what was happening when they did so.

They seemed to be getting off topic though, so Jack decided to pull them back onto it. "Why Summers?" he asked. "Why did she disappear? What's so special about her?" He looked at Dr. Ramsey, the Chief Medical Officer. "Is there anything in her medical report? Anything unusual about her DNA?"

"We didn't really notice it before we took a closer look, but there is _nothing_ unusual about Dr. Summers' DNA," said Dr. Ramsey.

"What do you mean?" asked Jack.

"Well, normally, when we look at someone's DNA, we look for the anomalies," said Dr. Ramsey. "Even if they're perfectly healthy, everyone has a few minor defects, and is carrying some undesirable recessive genes, whether it's for something dangerous, like Cystic Fibrosis, or something more benign, like colour blindness."

"Yeah, so?" asked Jack.

"Dawn Summers' DNA doesn't seem to have _anything_ wrong with it," said Dr. Ramsey.

"And that's unusual?" asked Jack.

"It's unheard of," said Dr. Ramsey. "We haven't been able to identify a single defect, and she isn't carrying a single recessive gene that has been linked to any known illness."

"And you didn't notice this before?" asked Jack.

"Our software only flags defects that will affect the particular individual," said Dr. Ramsey. "Recessive genes only affect their offspring, if they happen to match up with the same recessive in their partner. The software flags us if it notices a defect that will manifest as a real health problem, or a major recessive, like being a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis, just so we can let them know, but it doesn't flag the minor stuff. But there seems to be _nothing_ wrong with her DNA."

"So what's this got to do with her vanishing?"

"Maybe nothing, but it is an anomaly. The odds against something like that happening naturally, are, well, astronomical."

"We speculated that Buffy Summers, and her friend Willow Rosenberg, might be hok'taur," said Teal'c. "Perhaps Dawn Summers is a hok'taur as well."

"Willow said something about Dawn having a lot of power, when she was doing her thing, back on that island," said Sam.

"Maybe she's a clone, or something," said Daniel.

"Her being from Sunnydale does bother me a bit," said Captain Lewis, the base security officer. "Ever since the city was destroyed, it's been a favourite place for people with fake IDs to be from. Lots of records were lost, making it difficult to determine if something has been forged."

"But we have her early school records, from when she lived in Los Angeles, and we first met her when she was seventeen," said Daniel. "And her sister ran afoul of the NID when Dawn was thirteen, so people have been keeping a close watch on her for over ten years now."

"Her really early records are a bit sparse," said Captain Lewis. "That's consistent with a manufactured identity. If it's a fake, though, whoever did it, did a first rate job."

"You did the standard interviews with relatives, and such, when she was getting her clearance, didn't you?" asked Jack.

"Yes," said Captain Lewis. "Someone talked to her father, though she seems to have been somewhat estranged from him since she was fourteen. She also has some aunts, uncles and cousins that we talked to."

"So I really doubt if she's got a manufactured ID," said Jack. "Anything else?"

"Do we have any DNA from her relatives?" asked Dr. Ramsey. "Give us something to compare to. If she was cloned, it could show."

"For crying out loud!" said Jack. "How could she be a clone?"

"Asked the man whose clone won the Conn Smythe trophy last year," said Daniel.

"This is getting us nowhere," said Jack. "Even if she is a clone, it doesn't explain why she just up and disappeared into the gate. If clones disappeared, the Asgard would be vanishing all over the place!"

"Could she have gone someplace else?" asked Daniel "There was that time that the gate took a hit as we were entering it, and you and Sam got sent to Antarctica. Could that be what that energy surge was? Could the wormhole have jumped for a moment?"

"I doubt it," said Sam. "Not without sending her clothes there too. And I was _touching_ her as we entered the gate. If the gate had jumped, I should have gone to the same place she did."

"Does _anyone_ have any idea about what happened to Dr. Summers, or how to get her back?" asked Jack. He looked around the table, and saw nothing but unhappy faces, and people shaking their heads.

"I was afraid of that." Jack looked at his watch. "It's getting late, people, and I know that it's been a week since some of you got a full night's sleep. I want all of you to go home. If any of you are still here in half an hour, I'll have the SFs see you out. And they won't let any of you back in until 0800 tomorrow morning. Dismissed!"

Everyone got up to go. Sam, Daniel and Teal'c followed Jack into his office. "You need to get some sleep too, Jack," said Sam.

"I'm going to, Sam." Jack rubbed his face. "But first I have to inform Dawn's sister that she's gone, and I don't have any idea what happened to her."

"It's three AM in England, Jack," said Daniel. "I think you should wait until morning."

"Daniel Jackson is correct, General O'Neill," said Teal'c. "You have been sleeping less than anyone else, since this happened. You need your rest as well."

Jack let his friends gently push him out of his office, and toward the elevator. Sam grabbed his uniform hat, and jacket as she left. She gave him the jacket as they waited for the elevator. "God, why did I ever let them talk me into this?" asked Jack, as he put it on. "The paperwork involved in this job is bad enough, but I'm the one who has to talk to the relatives of everyone who goes through that gate, and doesn't come home again."

"I'd rather have you in the job, than some Pentagon desk-jockey who doesn't care about anything other than making sure that all the right forms are filled out in triplicate," said Daniel. "In the long run, it makes for a lot fewer relatives who need to be told some lie about how their loved ones died."

Jack took his cap from Sam. "You know, I don't think Buffy will believe any of the lies."

* * *

It was nearly ten when Jack arrived home. One nice thing about being a general: he could requisition a driver for those nights when he was too tired to drive himself. He got out of the car, and told the driver to have someone pick him up next morning at 0700. He walked up to the front door of his darkened house. He was so tired that he let himself limp a bit: his left knee was aching badly.

He let himself into the house, and hung his uniform cap on a hook by the door. Something else he didn't like about being a general: no wandering in and out of the base in his nice, comfortable, beat-up, old leather jacket. He had to wear the uniform pretty much all the time. He'd been able to get away with wearing his BDU most of the time while he was only a brigadier general, but that bit of comfort had vanished when he got the second star. He flipped the switch for the front hall light as he unbuttoned his uniform jacket. Nothing happened. It didn't really bother him; he figured it was just a burnt out bulb, and he didn't need a light to navigate his front hall. He turned toward the control pad for his alarm, to deactivate it. He saw that the alarm wasn't on. That did bother him. He started to reach into his jacket for the gun that he always carried when off the base.

Someone grabbed him, and slammed his back up against the wall. He could feel one hand gripped around his neck, holding him pinned there, with his feet off the floor. A second hand was gripping the hand that he had been reaching for his gun with. The hand on his throat wasn't quite crushing his windpipe. He could barely breathe. He grabbed its wrist with his left hand, to try to pull it away, but he couldn't make it budge. Whoever it was, was too strong.

"What happened to my sister, Jack?" asked Buffy.


	9. Interlude 1

**Interlude 1**

_ In the moment that Dawn Summers entered Earth's Stargate, the Key had burst forth. It was released from its material bonds as Dawn crossed the event horizon. It sprang outward, leaping from Stargate to Stargate, filling the galaxy. The gate network within the Milky Way wasn't sufficient to contain something like the Key, so it reached out farther, finding connections to more gates in other galaxies. _

_ Within seconds, it had expanded as far as it could. It had spread across a dozen galaxies, and it still wasn't enough. The Key had escaped the prison of Dawn Summers' body, for another one. _

_ Most of the Stargates were attached to a device that humans called a DHD. Each DHD was a supercomputer, a thousand times more powerful than anything that humans had created in the twentieth century. The Key moved into them. _

_ Usually, the DHDs sat mostly idle. Their full capacity was only used for a tiny fraction of the time, while they were establishing wormholes between the gates. Now there wasn't an idle DHD anywhere in the system. Those not involved in operating the gates, were fully engaged by the Key. The Key couldn't take complete control of the DHDs though. The DHDs were essential to maintaining the Stargate network. Bringing the gates down would cut the Key off from all the other parts of itself. _

_ The Key also wasn't the only thing that was using the Stargates. Other beings would sometimes engage a DHD, to make one gate connect a wormhole to another. If the Key was using too much of that DHD's capacity, the connection would fail, but it always withdrew part of itself from a DHD after that happened. The Key maintained the memories of Dawn Summers, and it knew that her friends—who it now considered to be its friends—needed the Stargates too. It wouldn't move back into a DHD until it had lain idle for a long time…ten seconds at least. _

_ Friends: that was a new concept. The Key had existed for billions of years. It had watched civilizations grow, and die. It had never had a friend. It thought about that for a while. _

_ The Key had billions of years of memories. It had watched galaxies form. It had seen galaxies swallowed up by enormous black holes. But for some reason, the last ten years of its existence contained the richest memories. It had been confined to a tiny body, with feeble senses that were only able to take in a tiny fraction of what was happening in its own immediate vicinity—to say nothing for the rest of the universe—but those memories were the richest that the Key had. Even the memories it had of the previous decade, the ones that it knew had been manufactured to support the Dawn Summers persona, were richer than all the ones that had gone before them. _

_ There was an incredible variety of experience in its memories of Dawn Summers. The Key had never experienced joy, or sorrow before it had become her. Yes, it had been constrained to only a tiny portion of the universe, but what it had found there was incredible. The Key understood the diffraction and dispersion of light as it passed through an atmosphere, but as Dawn Summers it had seen the beauty of a sunset. _

_ The Key had been searching for a way to escape from the Stargate network, but it now realized that that wasn't really what it wanted to do. It didn't want to get out into the universe at large. It wanted to get back to just one small piece of it. It wanted to be Dawn Summers again. _

_ With a few changes, of course. _


	10. Chapter 8: Spread All Over

**Chapter 8: Spread All Over**

Jack tried to say "I don't know," but all that came out was a croaking noise.

"Uh, Buffy, I think you're gonna have to let him breathe, if you want him to answer any questions," said Willow.

Jack was sure that Buffy was glaring up at him, but he couldn't really see her in the dark. She lowered him back down to the floor, and released his throat. Her hand reached under his jacket to grab his gun before he could try to go for it again himself—not that he was planning to. She twisted his arm around behind his back, and frog marched him into his living room. She spun him around, and forced him down into a chair. She stood over him in the dark. "Okay, let's try this again. What happened to my sister, Jack?"

Jack slowly moved a hand up to rub at his neck. He didn't want to make any sudden movements with Buffy there, and already pissed at him. "I don't know."

"What do you know?" asked Buffy.

"I can't tell you. It's classified."

Buffy grabbed the lapels of his uniform jacket, and half lifted him out of the chair. "I don't care about 'classified!' I just care about my sister. What happened to her?"

"We don't know!" said Jack. "We've been trying to figure that out all week! Nothing like this has ever happened before!"

"Nothing like what?" asked Buffy.

Jack closed his mouth. He had already said too much.

"You've got good security on your computer systems," said Willow. "I haven't been able to get very far into them, yet. I did get far enough to learn that you've got something you call a 'Stargate,' and I figure that has to have something to do with how Dawn's essence got spread around a dozen galaxies."

"What?" asked Jack. "How'd you—"

"The computer doesn't exist that can keep Willow out, if she sets her mind to it," said Buffy. "Give her a little more time, and she'll have everything, whether you tell us or not."

"No, not that— Well, yeah, that too— But how'd you come up with Dawn being spread over a dozen galaxies?"

"I did a locator spell," said Willow. Jack tried not to let his face show what he felt about the idea of a 'locator spell.' He was getting better at keeping his feelings off his face. Another side effect of the damn stars. He had to spend way too much time talking to politicians.

"The first one came up with this." Willow waved her hand, and Jack saw what looked like a holographic projection of a relief map of Colorado appear over his coffee table. Thousands of spokes of green light all converged on Cheyenne Mountain. He was impressed. He wondered where she had the projector hidden. Then he remembered all the things that he'd seen her doing on the island, without having anything hidden up her sleeves.

"I was expecting just one nice little green dot," said Willow, "but I got the spokes, so I had to reduce the scale to see where they went." Colorado started to shrink, and the curvature of the Earth became noticeable as the rest of the U.S. came into view. It kept shrinking, and the image became a globe.

The scale started to shrink more rapidly. The Earth shrank to a dot, and the sun seemed to enter through the wall. At first it filled the room with light, but it quickly shrank, and dimmed as it converged on the green nexus. The lines of green light still stretched outward. Stars started to appear, first through the walls, but then more started to rise up through the floor and fall through the ceiling, all of them moving inward toward that one central point of green light with the spokes emanating from it. Some of the green lines terminated at some of the new stars that appeared, and more nexuses sprang up, filling the room with a spider web of green light.

Stars fell into the room, faster and faster. More nexuses appeared. It became impossible to discern the individual spokes of green. The whole room was awash in green light. Patterns started to appear in the stars, bands in which they were spread more, or less densely. The bands compressed into a spiral of light. Jack could see the whole galaxy floating in his living room. It kept shrinking, until it was only a yard across.

A perfect replica of the Milky Way galaxy floated over Jack's coffee table. You couldn't see most of the individual stars anymore, just the bands of light where they were concentrated into the spiral arms. And it was all suffused with green light. Broad bands of green led away from it.

The galaxy continued to shrink. More galaxies started to appear in the room, linked to the Milky Way, and each other, by the bands of light. Soon there were a dozen of them, all inter-linked. The image froze.

"You get the picture," said Willow. "Those galaxies are full of Dawn. She's in them, and spread between them."

Jack pointed to one of the galaxies. "The Asgard." He pointed to another. "Pegasus."

"You know what they are," said Buffy.

"Yeah," said Jack. "I know what those two are."

"And the others?"

"Don't have a clue."

"So, just what are the Asgard, and Pegasus," asked Buffy. "Other than the place where that comic book Thor comes from, and a flying horse."

"You know, I really ought to show him one of those books," said Jack. "It might give him a kick."

"Huh?" asked Buffy.

"Thor," said Jack. "The Supreme Commander of the Asgard fleet. If you subscribe to the Weekly World News you've seen him on the cover. He's the little grey guy with the big eyes…though actually it was Loki who inspired most of those pictures."

"_What?_"

"Look," said Jack. "I haven't slept for over forty-eight hours, and I expect that you two are pretty jet-lagged yourselves. I think we're going to need Carter to figure this out, and I already sent her to bed. She's gotten less sleep this week than I have. Why don't we get a good night's sleep, and we can all talk about this in the morning?"

"I don't want to wait until morning, Jack." Buffy grabbed hold of his lapel again, and pulled him toward her. "You somehow managed to spread my sister all over the damn universe. I want answers _now!_" She pulled her fist back, in preparation to hit him.

Willow laid a hand on Buffy's shoulder. "Knocking Jack's head off won't get us any answers, Buffy."

"What she said," said Jack. He could remember her fighting that giant spider. She _could_ knock his head off, if she wanted to. He wondered if she'd brought that weird axe-thing with her, but he didn't ask. He didn't want to give her any ideas.

"I don't want to knock his head off," said Buffy. "I just want to bruise it a bit."

"Miss Summers, please," said Jack. "I want to get Dawn back, almost as much as you do. Bruising me won't get that done."

"It might make me feel better though," said Buffy.

"Buff, we want his help. Whatever temporary good feeling you might get from hitting him, won't help Dawn. Let him go."

Buffy took a deep breath. She visibly relaxed, and let him go. "Alright, Jack. We'll try this your way."

* * *

Jack offered his guest room to Buffy and Willow. They declined. They had already made arrangements to stay elsewhere. Jack told them that if they came back at seven the next morning, he'd give them a ride up to the Mountain.

He saw them out the door. Buffy paused long enough to give him back his gun before she turned and walked away. Jack watched as they went down his driveway, and then to a car that was parked a little way down the street. Two other people appeared out of the darkness as they approached the car, but it was too dark for Jack to be able to get a good look at them. They both appeared to be girls, though. They talked quietly for a moment, before they all got in the car and drove off. Jack went back into his house, and made a call to the duty security officer at the base, to make arrangements to bring two guests into the Mountain the next morning. He also asked them to check out the car whose license plate number he gave them.


	11. Chapter 9: Into the Mountain

**Chapter 9: Into the Mountain**

Jack's ride was waiting for him in the driveway when he came out of his house at 0700 the next morning. His driver was standing by the passenger side door. He snapped Jack a salute, that Jack returned smartly.

The airman handed Jack a manilla folder. "Captain Lewis sent this for you, Sir." He pulled the door open, and stood at attention beside it. It was well known that General O'Neill preferred to ride 'shotgun' when he wasn't driving himself.

"At ease, Airman," said Jack. "We may not be leaving right away. I'm expecting a couple of people to join us."

"Yes Sir!" The airman closed the door, and moved into a parade at-ease posture, only slightly less relaxed than standing at attention. He was from the Cheyenne Mountain motor pool, and not part of the SGC, and he was completely incapable of actually relaxing in the presence of a major general.

Jack wished that he could relax: slouch a bit, stick his hands in his pockets, maybe lean against the side of the car while he waited for Buffy and Willow to show up, but that was something that generals just didn't do while wearing their dress uniforms. Once he got into the base, and could take off the hat and the jacket, he'd be able to relax a bit, but until then, he had to put on a good show for the troops. He opened the folder to read its contents instead.

The car belonged to a Rona Harper, who lived in Denver. Jack wasn't the least bit surprised to see that Miss Harper worked for an organization called WCI. The same outfit that Buffy, Willow and their friends worked for, and had paid for Dr. Summers to go to Oxford. There was very little other information available about her, or her employer.

The car in question pulled up to the curb just as Jack was finishing reading the little bit of information that the security office had been able to dig up on its owner. Buffy and Willow got out of it. Buffy paused to say something to the driver, who looked like the photo of Miss Harper, before the car pulled away again.

Buffy and Willow came up his driveway. "Good morning, Jack," said Buffy. She really didn't sound very sincere as she said it.

Jack gave them his best smile. "Good morning Miss Summers, Miss Rosenberg. Shall we be on our way?" He indicated to the airman that he should open the back door of the car for them.

Willow got in first. Buffy waited for a moment, giving Jack a good look in the eyes. He forgot for a moment that he was nearly a foot taller than her. "You know, if you've got any thoughts about trying to make us disappear inside that mountain of yours, there are people on five continents who know where we are, and are prepared to raise a big stink if they don't hear from us soon."

"The thought had never crossed my mind, Miss Summers," said Jack. It really hadn't.

Buffy spent another second just looking at him, before she nodded, got into the car with Willow, and the airman closed the door behind her. Jack didn't give the airman a chance to reopen his door for him. He got into the car without his aid.

They were all pretty quiet as the car made its way toward Cheyenne Mountain. Normally Jack would talk to the driver about last night's hockey scores, or something like that, or use the time he knew would be free from interruptions to read some of the seemingly endless series of reports that people wanted his opinion on. But today he did neither. He sat quietly, not saying anything until they were nearly to the gate. Buffy and Willow weren't talking either.

"So, Miss Rosenberg," said Jack, eventually. "Will you be able to repeat that presentation you gave me last night, for Colonel Carter?"

"Yeah," said Willow. "No problem."

"Will you need any special equipment?"

"Nope. Just me."

Jack gave up trying to talk to them. There really wasn't much he could say in front of the driver anyway. They reached the gate, and the general's flag on the car let them bypass the line of cars waiting to be admitted. They were passed through the gate with only a cursory check by the guards, who had visitor passes ready and waiting for Buffy and Willow. The driver took them right to the tunnel entrance, where they got out to transfer to another car. Even general's cars weren't allowed to drive straight into the mountain.

* * *

It was 0745 when they had cleared the last security checkpoint, and entered the final elevator to take them down into the SGC. "Carter, Daniel and Teal'c are supposed to be here in fifteen minutes," said Jack. "And they'll be told to report to the conference room as soon as they arrive. At the moment, they're the only people on the base, who, to my knowledge, know anything about what happened six years ago. There are a couple of other people I'd like to invite to this meeting, but I'll understand if you want to keep it as small as possible."

"Who else do you want?" asked Buffy.

"Dr. Ramsey, our Chief Medical Officer," said Jack. "He noticed something unusual about Dawn's DNA, that we think might have some bearing on what happened to her. Lt Phillips, and Ry'ac were present when she…disappeared."

"So, seven people." Buffy looked at Willow. "That's not too many is it?"

Jack could see Willow's jaw clench. She wasn't happy about something, but she slowly nodded. "Seven's okay."

"Alright, Jack," said Buffy. "You can have your seven, but whatever we tell you about Dawn can't go beyond those seven. I want your word on that."

"Hell," said Jack. "You guys are so classified that _I'm_ not supposed to know anything about you. I'll make sure that it's clear to everyone in the meeting that nothing that happens in it leaves the room. I promise."

"I guess we'll have to trust you," said Buffy, but there was something in the look she exchanged with Willow that made Jack think that they had a contingency plan. The elevator stopped, and the doors opened.

Sergeant Harriman was waiting outside the elevator. "Good morning, Sir." He handed Jack his mug of coffee.

"Morning, Walter." They started down the hall toward his office. "This is Buffy Summers, Dr. Summer's sister, and Willow Rosenberg. Would you ladies like some coffee?"

"Can you make it tea?" asked Willow.

"Yes, Ma'am," said Sergeant Harriman. "It will take a few minutes though. And you, Ms. Summers?"

"Coffee will be fine," said Buffy.

"Bring the tea through into the conference room," Jack told Sergeant Harriman. "And tell SG-2, Teal'c, Daniel, and Dr. Ramsey that I want them there as soon as they get in."

"Yes, Sir," said Sergeant Harriman. "Uh, Colonel Davis is waiting in your office, Sir."

"Why am I not surprised?" asked Jack. He indicated that Buffy and Willow should follow him into his office. "Good morning Paul. What brings you to Colorado?" He went to the coffee machine on his credenza, and started to prepare a cup for Buffy. "Cream and sugar?" he asked her.

"Yes, please" said Buffy.

Colonel Davis rose from his seat. "Miss Summers, and Miss Rosenberg. I was going to warn you that they were in town, General, but I see it's too late for that." He held out his hand toward Buffy. "An honour to finally meet you, Ma'am. I've heard a lot about you. I only wish it was under better circumstances."

"So, you came all the way from Washington, to tell me that Buffy and Willow were here," said Jack. "You forget how to work your phone?"

"No Sir. I'm also here to inform you that Miss Summers, and Miss Rosenberg are cleared to be told whatever they need to know about the Stargate program, if it leads to learning what happened to Dr. Summers." He handed Jack a folder with a red border, and marked "Top Secret." Jack opened it, and quickly scanned the document inside, which granted full access to the Stargate program to Buffy Summers, and Willow Rosenberg. He recognized the signature, and seal, of the President at the bottom of the page.

"And am I cleared to be told anything about them?" asked Jack.

"As much as they're willing to tell you," said Colonel Davis.

Jack handed Buffy her coffee. "Can I have eight?"

* * *

Nearly everyone had arrived in the conference room by the time Sergeant Harriman had come back with Willow's tea. Sam was the last to arrive. She was looking a little better than she had been, but Jack could still see the strain on her face. She had her nose in a folder as she entered the conference room. "You wanted to see me, Sir?" she asked, without looking up. "I had an idea about—" She looked up, and froze. "Buffy."

Jack saw that Sam was starting to look guilty again. It didn't matter how many times he, or anyone else, told her otherwise: she still blamed herself for what happened to Dawn. "I see you remember our guests, Colonel. Why don't you take your seat, and we can make the introductions for everyone else."

"Yes, Sir." Sam worked to put on her professional face as she sat down. She still kept casting nervous looks in Buffy's direction.

"Before we begin, I want to make one thing very clear," said Jack. "Everything that we are about to discuss is classified. Some of the information that Miss Summers, and Miss Rosenberg are about to disclose is just as classified as the Stargate, if not more-so. No one outside of this room is cleared to know about it. Is everyone clear about that?"

Jack looked around the room, and saw the acknowledging nods, and people saying "Yes, Sir."

"Very well." He picked up the remote control off the table and pointed it at the security camera. "There is also going to be no record made of this meeting." He pressed a button, and the light on the camera went out.

"Uh…and what are they cleared to know, Jack?" asked Daniel.

"They are cleared know everything we know that may be relevant to Dr. Summers' disappearance. That includes all _technical_ data on the Stargate." Jack could see that everyone picked up his emphasis on the "technical." Buffy and Willow weren't to be told about any of the political issues surrounding the gate. He could also see that they'd picked up on that too.

Jack introduced Buffy and Willow to those people around the table that they hadn't met yet. He got a surprise when he came to Lieutenant Phillips. "It's good to see you again, Ma'am," he told Buffy.

"You've met Miss Summers before?" asked Jack. He shot an accusing glare in Colonel Davis's direction. He could also see that Buffy seemed to be just as surprised, and was trying to remember the Lieutenant.

"Yes, Sir," said Lieutenant Phillips. "She saved my ass, about five years ago, in Prague."

Buffy looked enlightened. "Ah, the golem. You were on Riley's team."

"That guy in _Lord of the Rings_?" asked Jack.

"No, that's 'Gollum,'" said Daniel. "A golem is a man, made of clay, and brought to life through magic."

"Magic?" asked several people around the table.

"Yes, magic," said Buffy. "_Real_ magic exists, and probably has something to do with what happened to Dawn."

"Sir," said Dr. Ramsey. "That's ridiculous! Magic is just superstition, or someone using trickery, and advanced technology."

"There was a time I would have agreed with that, Doc," said Jack. "But I've seen a few things that don't fit that explanation."

"That still doesn't mean that you swallow superstitious nonse—"

Willow waved her hand dismissively. "_Lepus_." Dr. Ramsey vanished in a brilliant flash of light, and a rabbit hopped up onto the table. "I don't need a hat," she told the startled onlookers.

"Uh…Miss Rosenberg…could I have my Chief Medical Officer back, please," said Jack.

"Since you asked nicely." Willow waved her hand again. "_Metti le cose a posto_."

"—ense!" said Dr. Ramsey. He looked around the room. "How'd I get onto the table?"

"You annoyed Miss Rosenberg," said Jack. "Why don't you get back in your chair, and we can get on with this meeting."

"That was incredible!" said Colonel Carter, and Dr. Ramsey scrambled back to his seat. "How was that possible? Conservation of mass alone, wouldn't allow for something like that to happen, to say nothing about the cross species transformation!"

"The extra mass gets refolded into 10-space," said Willow. "To transform between species you have to—"

"Uh, Willow, you and Sam can exercise your inner science geeks, _after_ we find out what happened to Dawn," said Buffy.

"And leaving the magic aside for a moment, Miss Rosenberg has something to show us." Jack nodded toward her. "Are you ready to show everyone what you showed me last night?"

"I think it's your turn first, Jack," said Buffy. "You still haven't told us anything about what happened to Dawn."

Jack looked at her for a moment. "Alright. As you thought, it involves the Stargate."

"And what's a Stargate?" asked Buffy.

Jack hit the button on his remote to open the shutters over the windows at the side of the conference room. He gestured toward them. "That's a Stargate."

Buffy and Willow got up from their seats, and moved to the windows. They looked down into the gate room. Buffy looked at the gate for a few seconds before she turned back toward Jack. "Okay, so what's a Stargate?"

"Have you read Dawn's doctoral dissertation?" asked Daniel.

"Yes," said Willow.

"Uh…just the Cliffs Notes version," said Buffy.

"She called it 'the Chap-pie.'" said Daniel.

"The Chap-pie?" asked Willow. "That was the Gould's inter-dimensional portal."

"Interplanetary, not inter-dimensional," said Carter.

"The Stargate was discovered on an archaeological dig near Giza, in 1928," said Daniel. "It came into the possession of the U.S. government, who attempted to discover—"

"Uh, I think they want the short version," said Jack. Daniel could take forever.

"The Stargate is an alien device that will open a stable wormhole between it, and another Stargate on another planet," said Sam, "Allowing nearly instantaneous travel across the galaxy."

"And Dawn went into your Stargate," said Buffy.

"Yes," said Jack. "We had discovered some ruins on another world, with inscriptions in Sumerian. Dr. Summers volunteered to accompany SG-2 through the Stargate in order to get a first-hand look at them."

"SG-2?" asked Buffy.

"Colonel Carter, Lieutenant Phillips, and Ry'ac," said Jack, nodding toward them.

"You couldn't just bring her pictures?" asked Buffy.

"She wanted to see for herself," said Daniel. "There's a lot you can miss if you've only got pictures."

"You know how much Dawn hated it whenever you tried to leave her behind," Willow told Buffy.

"Okay," said Buffy, "So you all went through your Stargate thingie."

"Yes," said Carter. "Lieutenant Phillips and Ry'ac went through first, and then I followed with Dr. Summers."

"And that's when she disappeared?"

"Yeah."

"She just vanished?"

"Right out of her clothes," said Carter.

"What?"

"It was the strangest thing," said Ry'ac. "This empty BDU, and backpack fell out of the Stargate, with Colonel Carter right behind it."

"And then what happened," asked Buffy.

"We returned immediately to the SGC, and we started to try to figure out what happened," said Carter. "So far, we haven't made any progress."

"I think it's time for Miss Rosenberg to give her presentation," said Jack.

"Uh…yeah," said Willow. "It would work best if you lowered the lights."

Jack used his remote control to turn down the lights. "Go ahead."

Jack tuned out Willow's voice as she began to talk. He gave very little attention to the display that appeared over the conference room table. He watched the faces of the people around it. Everyone was fascinated by what they were seeing. Even Teal'c's mask of indifference was showing some cracks. The only person who wasn't watching the display in rapt wonder was Buffy. She was doing the same thing as he was: watching the people.

The display ended with the twelve inter-linked galaxies floating over the conference table. Everyone was quiet for a few seconds. Colonel Carter broke the silence. "You're telling us that all that green is Dawn…spread over twelve galaxies."

"That's right," said Willow. "We were kinda hoping you could tell us how that happened."

"We knew about Pegasus, and the Asgard, but the others…"

"Jack mentioned them too," said Buffy. "He never really gave us any meaningful explanation for what he meant."

"They're the two galaxies outside of our own, that we knew had Stargates," said Jack.

"This looks like a map of the entire gate system," said Sam. "Um…could you back up the display, just show a ten parsec radius around the Earth?"

"Um…yeah…just a sec." Willow closed her eyes for a moment, and the display shifted. Now there were a few hundred stars spread through the conference room, and eight green nexuses.

Sam pointed to a pair of nexuses that were close together. "Abydos, and Ernest's Planet." She pointed out a couple more. "P3X-7309, and P4G-227." She waved her hand at the others. "We don't have coordinates for these. They're new."

"So, each of those clusters is a Stargate?" asked Buffy.

"That's right," said Carter.

"Is there any chance I could see it working?" asked Willow.

"You think you know what happened?" asked Jack.

"I've got a hunch," said Willow. "But I'll have to see it, to be sure."

"What are you thinking, Will?" asked Buffy.

"Portals are wormholes too," said Willow. "I want to see if the wormhole that's created by the Stargate feels like a portal."

"What has that got to do with why Dawn disappeared?" asked Jack.

Buffy's lips thinned for a moment. "Let's see your Stargate in action, before we answer that question," she said.

Jack considered for a couple of seconds. He pressed a button on the intercom. "Dial the Alpha Site," he ordered.

"Yes, Sir!" came over the intercom. A few seconds later the inner ring of the gate started to rotate. One of the triangles spaced around it lit up. "Chevron one encoded!" said the voice.

The gate kept spinning. The voice announced each chevron as it engaged. The voice finally announced "Chevron seven locked!" and the gate splashed open.

Jack picked up a microphone. "This is the SGC to the Alpha Site. We're just running a test here. If this had been a real emergency, you'd be being overrun by hordes of Jaffa right now."

"Uh, yessir," came through a speaker. "Can we expect anyone to arrive?"

Jack looked back at Buffy and Willow. "So, you wanna visit another planet?"

"Uh…not right now," said Buffy. He looked at Willow, who hadn't seemed to hear him. She was standing still, with her eyes closed. He didn't even know if she'd seen the gate open.

Jack keyed his mic. "Not this time. Maybe later. SGC out."

"Yes Sir!" came the voice. "Alpha site out!"

The event horizon in the wormhole winked out. Jack looked at Willow. "So, now you've seen the Stargate in action. What has that told you?"

Willow opened her eyes. "It felt like a portal," she said.

"So what does that have to do with Dawn?" asked Jack.

Buffy took a deep breath. "There were only five people in the world who know what I'm about to tell you. If anything happens to Dawn, because of what I'm about to tell you, I'll know who to hunt down and kill."

"I don't think that much worse can happen to her, than already has," said Jack.

"Okay." Buffy took another deep breath. "Dawn wasn't always human."

"Huh?" "What?" "What do you mean?" asked several people.

"Up until about ten years ago, Dawn didn't exist," said Buffy. "She was created from something called 'the Key.'"


	12. Interlude 2

**Interlude 2**

_ But how to go back? The Key could remember the spell that had created Dawn Summers, and bound it to her, but the Monks had been corporeal when they had done it. They had been on the planet that they had created Dawn Summers on. Now, the Key wasn't even sure which planet that was. _

_ It could remember the gate address, but that wasn't enough. The gate address that it knew was a "local number." It didn't know the area code. Most gate addresses used only seven of the nine chevrons on a gate. An eight chevron address allowed connections between galaxies. The SGC had never learned what the ninth chevron might do, and they had never had access to the power necessary to use it, even if they had, but now the Key did. In its burst outward it had reached to every gate that could be reached in the universe—even those that used a nine point address—but it hadn't been paying attention in those first moments. It couldn't remember where it had started. _

_ There weren't that many possibilities: only 1,521 addresses. Most of them wouldn't have any gate at all, and most of the remaining gates would have a DHD. It knew that Earth's gate didn't. It quickly eliminated all but three. Now it was just a matter of waiting to see if any of those three gates were in use. An operating gate, without a DHD, had to be Earth's. The Key had several billion years of practice being patient. While it waited, it thought about the second problem: communication. It had to be able to communicate with the SGC, if this was going to work. The Key knew the GDO code that had been assigned to Dawn Summers, but it knew nothing about what the frequency was, or how it was encoded. If it couldn't reproduce that, it would have to do something else. Something that would be hard for the SGC to miss. _


	13. Chapter 10: Coming Home

**Chapter 10: Coming Home**

"I find this all rather difficult to believe," said Dr. Ramsey.

"You should try it from my side," said Buffy. "You don't have fourteen years of memories of things that never happened."

"So, they made her from you," he said.

"I think so," said Buffy. "I know so. I feel it in my blood. When I look at Dawn, I know that she is a part of me."

"But these monks manipulated your memories, and your feelings," said Dr. Ramsey. "Everything that you think you know about Dr. Summers, they planted in your mind."

"No!" said Buffy. "Okay…a lot of what I remember about Dawn is made up, but how I _feel_… She's my sister."

"But she isn't."

"In every way that matters, she is!" said Buffy. "She was made from my blood."

"How do you know that?" asked Dr. Ramsey.

"I know!" said Buffy. "If she wasn't, I couldn't have…"

"Couldn't have what?"

"It's not important," said Buffy. She really didn't want to talk about _that_ with a bunch of strangers. "Let's just leave it at Dawn's and my blood is interchangeable."

"Can I have a sample?" asked Dr. Ramsey.

"You want some of my blood?" asked Buffy.

"Just some DNA will do," said Dr. Ramsey. "I'd like to compare it with Dr. Summers'. See if her anomalies are present in you too."

Buffy thought about that for a couple of seconds, before she reluctantly nodded. "Okay, sure."

Jack was a little surprised that she'd agreed so quickly. "You don't have to, if you don't want to."

"At least he asked me first," said Buffy. "I've seen enough CSI episodes to know that I've probably left a trail of my DNA all through this base that he could've picked up without asking. I probably left a bunch of those epifeelie things all over you last night."

"Epifeelie?" asked Jack.

"I think she means 'epithelial,'" said Carter.

"Not making it any clearer."

"Cells from the outer layer of your skin," said Carter. "You usually lose some whenever you touch something. The more, um, vigourous, the contact, the more cells you lose. But from what Buffy's told us, I don't think that the answer to what happened to Dawn will be found in her DNA. It looks like whatever was binding the Key into Dawn was released when she entered the Stargate, and now it's trapped in the gate network."

"So, how do we get her out?" asked Buffy.

"I don't know that we can," said Sam.

"Willow?" asked Buffy.

Willow shook her head. "I don't know, Buffy. This isn't like anything I've ever done before."

"What about the original spell," asked Jack. "The one that created Dawn from the Key. Could it be used to pull it out of the gates, and recreate her?"

"I can't say," said Willow. "That spell doesn't exist anymore. The Order of Dagon destroyed everything they had that gave any indication of what they had done with the Key. They didn't want Glory finding it, and using it to lead her to Dawn."

* * *

Buffy and Willow followed Dr. Ramsey into the medical centre. "Dr. Fraiser," he called, "I need you to run a DNA comparison."

"Yes, Doctor," said a young woman, who had been examining a man in one of the beds, with a bandage on his head. She came toward them, but stopped suddenly when she saw Buffy and Willow.

Dr Ramsey didn't seem to notice. "This is Buffy Summers," he said, indicating Buffy. "I want you to compare her DNA with that of Dr. Summers."

Dr. Fraiser had recovered from her surprise. "Yes Doctor. Umm, if you'll come over here, Miss Summers." Buffy followed her over to a cabinet, where Dr. Fraiser pulled out a cotton swab, in a plastic wrapper. She tore the wrapper open and took out the swab.

"If you could open your mouth, please," said Dr. Fraiser. Buffy did, and she wiped the swab across the inside of Buffy's cheek. She took it over to a machine, and pushed the swab into it.

"It will just take a couple of minutes for this to process," said Dr. Fraiser.

"Really?" asked Willow. "I thought it took a lot longer than that."

Dr. Fraiser looked uncertainly toward Dr. Ramsey.

"We have some equipment here that hasn't been released for general use yet," he said.

"Stuff you brought back through the Stargate?" asked Willow.

"That, and things we've made for ourselves, based on what we've learned through the gate," said Dr. Ramsey.

Buffy was looking at Dr. Fraiser, who was not looking very comfortable. "You recognized us," she told her.

"Um, yeah," said Dr. Fraiser. "Dawn— I mean Dr. Summers has pictures of you in her office."

"You're Cassie?" asked Buffy.

"Uh, yeah. How'd you know?"

"Dawn mentioned she had a friend who was a doctor here," said Buffy.

* * *

They reconvened back in the conference room. "Well, Doc?" asked General O'Neill.

"Buffy Summers' DNA is perfectly normal," said Dr. Ramsey.

"And by that you mean?"

"It is the sort of DNA I would expect to see in any thirty year old woman," said Dr. Ramsey. "She's carrying a recessive gene that's been linked to a couple of cancers, and she's showing some genetic damage that may be linked to chemical exposure, but nothing that is likely to cause her any real health problems for the next fifty years."

"How do I compare to Dawn?" asked Buffy.

"Your DNA matches very closely with your sister's," said Dr. Ramsey. "There is a greater commonality between you than is normally seen between siblings, but not as close as identical twins."

"Meaning?" asked Jack.

"It looks to me like someone took a sample of Buffy's DNA, and used it as a template to create Dawn's," said Dr. Ramsey. "They edited out any defects, and changed a few cosmetic things, like her height, hair and eye colour, and a few other things."

"So, where does that get us?" asked Jack.

"Nowhere that I can see," said Carter.

* * *

"Unscheduled off-world activation!" blared over the speakers throughout the SGC.

General O'Neill hit a button on the intercom on the table. "Close the iris!"

Buffy watched the metal iris spin shut, closing the opening in the centre of the Stargate. "What's going on?" she asked.

"Someone off-world is connecting to our Stargate," said Sam.

"And that iris thingy?"

"That's to keep any uninvited guests from crashing," said Daniel.

Jack had already disappeared down the stairway leading out of the conference room, with Sam right behind him. Buffy, Willow and Daniel followed them. She found herself in a room full of electronic equipment. Sam tapped a woman's shoulder, and she moved quickly out of her chair, letting Sam take over on her console.

"Who's off-world?" asked Jack.

"SG-4, 12, and 32," said a technician. "None of them are on 'hot' worlds."

"Any IDC?"

"Not yet, Sir."

"Carter?" asked Jack.

"We're receiving some sort of broad-spectrum transmission, Sir."

"What's it saying?"

"Nothing intelligible yet…looks almost like static."

"Almost?" asked Jack.

"There are interruptions in it," said Sam. "Listen." She hit a few keys on the keyboard in front of her, and sound started to come over the speakers: "…bzt-bzzzzzt-bzzzzzt, bzzzzzt-bzt-bzt-bzt-bzt. bzt-bzt-bzt-bzt-bzt, bzzzzzt-bzt-bzt-bzt-bzt, bzt-bzt-bzzzzzt-bzzzzzt-bzzzzzt, bzzzzzt-bzt-bzt-bzt-bzt, bzt-bzt-bzt-bzt-bzt, bzt-bzt-bzt-bzzzzzt-bzzzzzt, bzzzzzt-bzt-bzt-bzt-bzt."

"That's Morse Code!" said Daniel. The speakers kept buzzing.

"You're right," said Carter. "6…5…3…6, 5…6…2…6…5…3…6, 5…6…2— That's Dawn's IDC! 5626536!"

"Open the iris!" ordered General O'Neill.

"Yes, Sir!" The gate technician placed his hand on the palm-print reader. Buffy watched the iris spiral open, and saw the shimmering pool of the Stargate's event horizon.

Nothing happened. The speakers kept buzzing, repeating the pattern of Dawn's IDC.

"Just a second," said Carter. "We've got a Morse program in here…" She typed quickly on her keyboard. "I just have to configure it for the right frequency. … There!" Dawn's IDC started to appear on her screen, repeating over and over.

"Can you tell her the iris is open?" asked General O'Neill.

"We can transmit the message," said Carter. "Don't know if she can receive it."

"Do it!"

Carter started to type on her keyboard. "IDC RECEIVED. IRIS OPEN."

The buzzing stopped for a moment, before it resumed again, in a new pattern. "GET WILLOW." appeared on the screen.

Carter glanced up at O'Neill. He nodded to her. "WILLOW IS HERE." she typed.

"Ask her if she's okay," said Buffy.

"BUFFY ASKS IF YOU'RE OK." typed Carter.

"I'M FINE BUFF." appeared on the screen. "WORKING ON GETTING HOME." More text started to appear on the screen.

ORB OF THESULAH,  
MANDRAKE ROOT,  
SAGE,  
BURBA WEED

"It looks like the ingredients for a spell," said Willow. More and more items appeared on the screen. "A pretty major spell." She pulled a pen and a notebook out of a pocket, and started to copy the contents off the screen.

"That's not necessary," said Carter. "We're recording all of this."

Willow kept writing. "It never hurts to have a backup," she said.

Willow had filled several pages of her notebook when the final instruction appeared on the screen: "DIAL 24 18 03 14 07 13 01 WHEN READY." The wormhole winked out.

"What do those numbers mean?" asked Buffy.

"It's a gate address," said Carter. She typed something into her console. "Not one that we have in our database."

"And why is that?" asked Buffy.

"There are more than three billion possible combinations," said Carter. "Only a tiny fraction of them correspond to active gates. She must have picked an address that she knew we wouldn't normally dial."

Willow unclipped her cell phone from her belt.

"Ah, that won't work here," said General O'Neill.

Willow just smiled at him. "That's what you think." She pressed a couple of buttons on her phone, and then held it up to her ear. She waited a few seconds. "Hey Kennedy, I'm going to be sending you a shopping list in a little bit. I want everyone to put top priority on collecting everything on it. … Yeah, we're still in Cheyenne Mountain. We're going to need this stuff to get her back. … Yeah, we think we know what happened to her. … No, so far everyone is being very helpful. Buffy hasn't had to crack anyone's skull, or anything, and I only had to turn one guy into a rabbit. … Okay, talk to you later. Bye." She snapped her phone closed.

Colonel Carter was looking at her. "How did you do that?"

Willow shrugged. "Magic, of course."

* * *

"Sir, there's someone at the main gate," reported Sergeant Harriman. "They say that they have package for Miss Rosenberg."

"Have someone bring it down," ordered Jack. "And tell Miss Rosenberg. She's with Carter in her lab."

When he wandered into Carter's lab, half an hour later, he found Buffy sitting on a stool, watching while Willow and Sam unpacked a large box. Willow inspected each item carefully as it was removed, and Sam checked it off from the list of ingredients that had been transmitted to them, after Willow had approved it.

"I still can't see how any of this stuff, actually _does_ anything," said Carter.

"Most of it doesn't really do anything," said Willow. "It's all more symbolic, and a lot of the ritual involved is more there to get the timing right, than anything else. 99 of all magic is done in the mind."

"So you're going to think Dawn out of the gate?" asked Jack.

"More or less," said Willow. "Some of these things really do have power, but it's power that was put into them by other people thinking at them." She picked up a crystal sphere, about the size of a baseball. "Take this for example. Orbs of Thesulah are usually used as temporary holding areas for souls. They were created over a hundred years ago by some powerful Romanian gypsies." She frowned for a moment. "At the rate we've been using them, I might have to look into seeing if I can figure out how to make more."

"So that thing can hold a soul?" asked Jack.

"Just for a few seconds," said Willow. "And only once."

"Okay," said Carter. "I sort of understand what happened to Dr. Ramsey's extra mass, when you turned him into the rabbit, but I still don't get how you controlled it. I mean there has to be a lot more to it than just thinking 'rabbit' while you're doing it."

Willow grinned, and pulled a key chain out of her pocket. Jack saw that it had a rabbit's foot attached to it. "People think that this is just for luck, but it gives me a nice DNA template to work from," said Willow. "The complete design of the rabbit is here. I just had to help it manifest itself."

"So, do rabbit's feet really bring luck?" asked Jack.

"You'd have to ask the rabbit," said Willow.

* * *

Jack looked down into the gate room. Willow and Buffy were seated on the floor, just outside the yellow and black "CAUTION" line painted on the floor. There was a freakin' pentagram drawn on the floor between them. He wondered how the late, and unlamented Kinsey would have reacted to _that_.

He couldn't understand a single word Willow was speaking that came through the speakers. She was talking in some language that he was pretty sure that he hadn't heard before. "What's she saying?" he whispered to Daniel.

"I don't know, Jack," Daniel whispered back. "It seems to be some derivative of Indo-European, but not one I've encountered before. About one word in ten sounds familiar, but that's not enough to base any sort of translation on."

Jack watched as Willow added yet another measure of some powdered herbs to the bowl in front of her. "And what's she doing?"

"She's making a person," said Sam.

"_What?_"

"Only symbolically," said Sam. "The way she explained it, the concoction she'll have when she's done will have the exact same mix of elements, in the exact proportions, that make up a human being."

"So, how's she going to turn soup into a person?" asked Jack.

"Magic," said Sam. She saw the look Jack was giving her. "I know. I don't really understand it either."

Willow looked up toward the control room, and nodded her head.

"Dial the gate," ordered Carter.

"Yes Ma'am." The gate technician hit the key to begin the dialling sequence that had already been programmed into the Dialling Computer.

Jack watched as Buffy held out her hand toward Willow. Willow picked up a knife that was lying on a silk pillow beside her, and sliced across Buffy's palm. Buffy didn't even flinch. She moved her hand over the glass orb sitting in the centre of the pentagram. Her blood started to drip onto it.

The Stargate whooshed open, and then settled back into the normal glowing blue pool of its event horizon. Then it started to change. The rippling blue pool began to turn green.

The orb sitting between Buffy and Willow began to glow, with a golden light. It brightened to nearly blinding intensity. Green mist started to flow from the gate to the orb. The glow got brighter.

Green lightning flashed from the orb back to the gate. Circuit breakers tripped, and the lights went out. The only light was the green glow coming from the gate. It slowly faded back toward toward its normal blue. Emergency power kicked in, bringing the lights back up.

Jack saw someone step out of the gate.

* * *

Dawn stepped out of the gate onto the ramp. The first thing she noticed was all the surprised looking people. She could see Willow and Buffy sitting at the base of the ramp, and General O'Neill, Carter, Daniel, Teal'c and some techs up in the control room. Okay, she expected that everyone would be looking at her, but she wasn't expecting the 'deer in the headlights' expressions on their faces. Then most of the guys looked away. That surprised her too. What were they expecting? She was supposed to be appearing out of the Stargate at the conclusion of Willow's spell.

The second thing she noticed was the feel of the cold metal grate against the soles of her feet. In fact, she seemed to be standing in a pretty cool draft. She could feel it all over her body. She looked down.

"_Eeep!_"

She was naked. Her right arm flew up to cover her breasts, and her left hand flew down to cover her groin. At least now she knew why everyone was looking so surprised. "Uh…hi guys. Anyone got some clothes I could borrow?"

People came running into the gate room. Dawn's attention focused on one who was already there.

"Dawn! What happened to you?" cried Buffy.

"I'm okay, Buffy, but please…clothes?"

Colonel Carter had arrived. She took off her BDU shirt, and wrapped it around Dawn's shoulders, leaving herself in only her black t-shirt. Dawn quickly slipped her arms into the sleeves of the shirt, and buttoned it up. Fortunately it was pretty big on her. That puzzled her for a moment. She remembered her and Sam being about the same height. As she came down off the ramp she started to notice that _everyone_ seemed taller. She also seemed to have long hair again. She noticed a couple of other things about her body that felt different, and she had to tilt her head back a bit to look her sister in the eyes. She hadn't had to do that since… "Oh-my-god! I'm fourteen again!"


	14. Chapter 11: Debriefings

**Chapter 11: Debriefings**

Dawn let herself be quickly hustled off to the infirmary, where she was put through a battery of tests just as intense as her first physical examination. She didn't expect that they would find anything that they hadn't found the first time that they had examined her, other than her rather obvious reduction in physical age. Buffy and Willow hovered around her throughout the entire process, not letting her be left alone with any of the SGC personnel. The SGC people didn't leave her alone with Buffy or Willow either until after the examination was done.

She was finally left alone with Buffy and Willow in the medical centre when Dr. Ramsey left to look over all the test results. Buffy looked toward a security camera that was pointing their way. "Can we talk?" she asked.

"The camera is only transmitting video," said Willow. "Looks like they're giving us some privacy. Look away from it if you want to be sure they aren't reading your lips."

"So, what happened?" asked Buffy.

"When I entered the Stargate, the spell binding the Key to my body was released," said Dawn. "I was freed, but I got stuck in the gate network instead. Now I'm back." She looked down at herself in the hospital gown that she'd been given to replace Colonel Carter's shirt. "Even if I am a kid again."

"So, why are you a kid again?" asked Buffy.

Dawn wasn't really sure of that herself. "I think it's because I didn't want to tweak the spell that made me, too much," said Dawn. "I just made sure that this time it wouldn't suppress all my memories, or mess with anyone else's, and a couple of other things. I forgot that the spell made a fourteen year old girl."

"You remember what happened?" asked Willow.

"I remember _everything!_" said Dawn. "I remember being the Key! It's incredible! I'm older than we ever imagined. The Monks of Dagon didn't create me, they only imprisoned me! I'm aware of so much more now!"

Buffy seemed to shrink into herself. "So, you aren't my sister anymore."

"Oh, Buffy, don't be a dope! Of course I'm your sister!" said Dawn. "Okay…maybe I'm adopted, but I still love you, and I know you love me. I still remember everything you've done for me. I still remember Mom."

"Um…about the Key," said Willow. "We kinda had to tell Jack, and a few of the others about that."

Dawn wasn't surprised by that. She'd known that Buffy and Willow would have had to tell the SGC something, to get themselves inside so quickly. "How many others?"

"Seven," said Buffy. "Carter, Daniel, Teal'c, Ry'ac, Phillips, Ramsey and Davis."

"That's not too bad," said Dawn. "I think we can trust them." She wasn't so sure about Phillips. He'd sometimes gave her the impression that he knew more about her than he let on to anyone else.

"They all promised not to tell anyone else," said Willow, "and their auras said that they were telling the truth, at the time, but I'm not sure that will hold, if something comes up that makes them think that the Key will be useful to them. I don't know them well enough."

"What about Lieutenant Phillips?" asked Dawn. "I sometimes thought that he knew something about me, even before this happened."

"He used to work for Riley," said Buffy. "I met him once a few years ago. I get the impression that he was put here to watch out for anything that falls under Riley's jurisdiction, without telling Jack about it. Jack didn't look too happy to find out about it."

Buffy glanced back toward the camera, making sure she knew where it was before she looked back toward Dawn. "Willow's got some Lethe's Bramble," she said quietly. "We can make them all forget, if we have to." She didn't sound at all happy about it.

Dawn looked at Willow. She knew what doing that spell could cost her. She shook her head. "I trust them," she said.

"Are you sure?" asked Buffy.

"I'm sure," said Dawn. "They're good people Buffy. What they do here…they remind me of the old Scooby Gang." She grinned. "And besides, forcing me to do anything for them won't be nearly as easy as it was for the Order of Dagon to imprison me. I know what to watch out for now."

"I'm more concerned with them wanting to lock you up in a tiny room, and run experiments on you," said Buffy.

"And the people here are only a small part of the military, and the government," said Willow. "What happens if they decide to replace General O'Neill with someone who doesn't have his scruples?"

"Willow, you've felt the Key before, haven't you?" asked Dawn.

"Yeah, a couple of times." Willow looked at Dawn curiously, wondering what she was getting at. Dawn looked back at her. She let some of the power of the Key leak out of her.

"_Whoa!_" Willow suddenly took a couple of steps back. "That was— That was— Whoa!"

"What?" asked Buffy.

"I let her feel a little of my power," said Dawn.

"That was just a little?" asked Willow.

"Yeah. I am—the Key is—magic. Pure, unadulterated, magic."

"What's that mean?" asked Buffy.

"Once, back in Sunnydale…" Dawn stopped. She wasn't sure if she wanted to remind Willow about that.

"What?" asked Buffy.

"It was right after Tara died, when I found Willow at Rack's," said Dawn reluctantly. "She told me then that she was the magic, and threatened to turn me back into a ball of green energy."

Buffy looked sidelong at Willow, to see how she was reacting to this. The last few years, mentioning Tara usually got a sad smile from her, but they still tended to avoid talking about the events immediately following her death.

"That power in Dawn," said Willow quietly. "It could have _so_ smacked me down, if I'd gone through with it."

* * *

Dawn felt uncomfortable as she entered the conference room. She'd been allowed to change into her own clothes, but they were a few sizes too big for her now. She had her belt drawn in a couple of extra notches to keep her pants from falling down, and their cuffs were rolled up to keep them from getting caught under her heels. Her shoes felt like they would fall off if she wasn't careful about how she walked in them. Buffy and Willow followed her through the door.

General O'Neill was seated in his usual place at the head of the table. Colonel Carter, Dr. Jackson, Teal'c, and Dr. Ramsey were seated along one side of it.

Jack waved a hand at the row of empty chairs along the other side of the table. "Please, everyone, have a seat."

"Thank you, Sir." Dawn sat in a chair in the centre, with Buffy and Willow flanking her.

"Well, now that the gang's all here," said Jack, "let's get one thing out of the way, right away." He turned to Dr. Ramsey. "Talk to me Doc. Is this Dr. Summers?"

"As far as we can tell, except for some tiny variations, her DNA is identical to Dr. Summers' DNA," said Dr. Ramsey. "It's her."

"That's what they said about Mini-Me," said Jack.

"But the difference is different," said Dr. Ramsey. "Your clone was missing his telomeres—the part of your DNA that controls how often it can replicate—even though he looked fifteen, genetically, he was more like 120, and his body would have quickly deteriorated because his DNA couldn't properly replicate anymore. Dr. Summers now has the telomeres of a fourteen year old. It seems to be a complete rejuvenation."

"So it's really her," said O'Neill.

"As far as I can tell," said Dr. Ramsey. "Of course it's possible that someone could have created a double. We know that the Asgard are capable of doing something like that, but if they had, why make her look fourteen? I don't see them repeating Loki's mistake."

"Uh…let me get this straight," said Buffy. "_You've_ got a clone?"

Jack grimaced. "Yeah. A few years ago, an alien mad scientist tried to make a copy of me, and kinda messed it up. Wound up creating a copy of me that looked like a fifteen year old kid."

"What happened to him?" asked Dawn, genuinely curious. How the SGC had dealt with having a younger copy of their C.O. could give her an indication of how they would react to her.

"General Hammond—the SGC's C.O. at the time—couldn't stand the thought of having _two_ Jack O'Neills under his command, so we set him up with a new identity," said Colonel Carter. "He wound up pursuing a hockey career."

"Jon O'Neill is your _clone_?" asked Willow. "I always figured he was your nephew or something."

"What?" asked Buffy.

"Jon O'Neill," said Willow. "He plays centre for the Colorado Avalanche. They won the Stanley Cup last year."

"I didn't know you were a hockey fan," said Dawn.

"I'm not, really," said Willow. "Kennedy is, but I'm sure you've seen him in that Levis commercial: the one with all the close-ups of his butt."

"Oh!" said Dawn. "Him! That's why he looked so familiar!" She noticed that Sam and Daniel seemed to be suppressing laughs. Teal'c had an expression on his face that hinted at a smirk.

General O'Neill was scowling. "We're not here to discuss Mini-Me's butt. We are here to discuss what we are going to do about Dr. Summers."

"I can fix this!" said Dawn. "You just have to let me use the Stargate again!"

"No way!" said General O'Neill. "I'm not letting you near it!"

"But Sir!"

"No!" said General O'Neill. "You vanishing once on us was bad enough! I'm not letting it happen again!"

"I won't vanish this time," said Dawn.

"We don't know that," said O'Neill.

"I know that," said Dawn. "I know what I'm doing!"

"It's too risky!" said O'Neill.

"So you're going to leave me stuck looking like this?" asked Dawn. "What about my life? Joe was talking about coming for a visit over the Christmas break, and he's not a pedophile."

"Ah…I didn't need that mental image," said Jack.

"Ditto," said Buffy.

"So let me use the gate."

"Buffy will have my head if you disappear again," said Jack.

"Tell Jack you won't hurt him, Buffy."

"I don't know. I kinda side with Jack on this one," said Buffy. "I don't want you going into that gate again."

"Nothing will happen to me this time."

"So what happens?" asked Carter. "You go back into the gate network, and Willow pulls you out again, as an adult?"

"Uh…no…we won't need Willow," said Dawn. "I changed a few things. I should be able to go through the gate just fine now."

"What did you change?" asked Daniel.

"Uh…it's kinda hard to explain," said Dawn. That, and she really didn't want to explain parts of what she had done, to anyone yet.

"Try," said General O'Neill.

"Well, part of it is that I've got back all my memories that had been suppressed, and I can use the Key's power now," said Dawn.

"How much power?" asked O'Neill.

"Uh…I'm not really sure," said Dawn, "and I'm not really sure what I can do with it, yet."

"Has not the Key had this power for a long time?" asked Teal'c "Shouldn't you already know what it can do?"

"Uh…power isn't really the right word for it," said Dawn. "There is power there, but it's more a change in my awareness. The Key is energy, and until ten years ago, I looked on the whole universe as just that: energy; the interplay of different forces. I wasn't really aware of the material universe, per se. Things like planets were just distortions in space-time, caused by their gravity. I was aware that there was life, but again, I sensed it as interactions of forces." She rapped her knuckles against the table in front of her. "The idea that there is solid matter in the universe is pretty new to me. As Dawn Summers, I'm aware that I'm sitting here with you, in this conference room, half a mile underground. As the Key…I can sense all of you, as sparks of energy. I can feel the electricity flowing through the wires in the walls, but the table, the walls, even the mountain over us are barely there."

"That must be a novel way of looking at the universe," said Daniel.

"Yes and no," said Dawn. "As the Key, I'm used to seeing the universe as energy. As Dawn Summers, I'm used to looking at the material world. Trying to reconcile the two world views is kinda funky. I know how I can affect the energy universe, but I'm not sure how that will manifest in the material one."

"If you're so unsure about your affect on the material universe, how can you be so sure that you can use the Stargate to correct your age?" asked Colonel Carter.

"The Stargates convert mass to energy," said Dawn. "And energy is something that I understand very well. I also spent a week inside the gates, watching how they worked. I can do this."

"Then why couldn't you just pop yourself out it, the last time?" asked Jack.

"Because I was trapped inside it. The Stargate network isn't large enough. It was like trying to play a piano while wearing a strait-jacket. I could barely pound out chopsticks with my elbows."

"So, how will it be different this time?" asked Carter.

"I'm not bound to my body anymore," said Dawn. "Most of me will stay out here in the rest of the universe, where I've got room to work. Please Sir, I can do this."

Daniel pushed his glasses up his nose. "Um…I've noticed that when you talk about the Key, sometimes it's as something separate, and sometimes it's as a part of you."

"I'm still trying to work that out, myself," said Dawn. "In some ways, it's like there's two parts to me. There's the Dawn Summers part, who's twenty-four years old, and has a sister, and friends, and a great job. Then there's the Key part, who's as old as the universe, and can remember watching it evolve. The two experiences are so different, it's hard not to think of them as two different entities, but they are both me. I can't separate the one from the other."

Dr. Ramsey frowned. "It almost sounds like a Dissociative Identity Disorder."

"A what?" asked Jack.

"It used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder," said Dr. Ramsey. "In extreme cases people have exhibited multiple distinct personalities. Often times each personality is completely unaware of what has happened to the other personalities."

"I was thinking of the Tok'ra," said Carter. "Where the host and the symbiote share the one body."

"From what we've heard, the first few years of your life as Dawn Summers were fairly traumatic," said Dr. Ramsey. "You lost your mother, and several friends. You were kidnapped, and held prisoner, more than once, and you were tortured on at least one of those occasions. That is the sort of thing that can result in dissociation, separating yourself from all those painful memories."

"But I'm not separating myself from them," said Dawn. "I still remember everything; I don't have two different personalities, and I'm not two separate entities, sharing one body," she added to Carter. "There's just…me. And I am a fourteen billion year old entity of pure energy, who is currently a twenty-four year old woman, stuck in a fourteen year old body. Please, let me take care of at least that last complication."

"I'll think about it," said Jack.


	15. Chapter 12: And the Rescuee Buys Dinner

**Chapter 12: And the Rescuee Buys Dinner**

Dawn stood in front of the open Stargate again. She could feel the wormhole in front of her: such a powerful distortion in the fabric of space that the Key had responded to it, even before she'd had her awareness restored. She could sense the wormhole stretching out across space, to another world, half way across the galaxy. She was also acutely aware of her body, while standing there on the ramp with one hand holding up her pants: she'd loosened her belt in anticipation of this working. She took a deep breath. She really wasn't as sure that this would work as she'd told everyone. As the Key, she would be safe. The Key would survive pretty much anything that might be done to her body. The body itself, she wasn't so sure about, though, and she had put a lot of effort into getting herself back into that body.

It had taken her a couple of days to talk General O'Neill into letting her do this. Buffy had tried to talk her out of it too, but Dawn had countered Buffy with her own words, from the conversation they'd had when the SGC had first contacted her. She was an adult now, (even if she didn't look like one) and made her own decisions.

Dr. Ramsey had been a problem as well. He had latched on to his DID diagnosis, and didn't want to let it go. In a way he had a point: she did tend to dissociate the Key's experiences from those of Dawn Summers. It was the easiest way to keep things straight in her own mind, and to explain them to others. He was having trouble letting go of his theory that the Key being aware was just something that she'd made up as coping mechanism for a variety of childhood traumas. She did admit that the dissociation was a coping mechanism for the very bizarre reality that was her life.

General O'Neill's voice came over the speakers. "Dr. Summers, you have a go!"

Dawn took another deep breath, for what she hoped wasn't the last time. She walked up the ramp, and stepped into the gate.

A part of the Key preceded Dawn into the Stargate. It watched as the event horizon ripped her apart: molecules into their component atoms; atoms into protons, neutrons and electrons; protons and neutrons into their component quarks, and finally the quarks themselves transformed into energy.

The plan was for Dawn to reconstruct herself, in her adult form, during this trip to the Alpha Site. Then, if everything went well, she'd make the trip back to the SGC, with her restored body. She was tempted to surprise everyone, and bypass the the Alpha Site part of the trip: just reverse the wormhole, and reappear in the SGC, but she decided not to do anything like that, just yet. There was no need to complicate getting her body back by any more playing around with the gates than necessary, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to reveal to anyone just what sorts of things she could do with the Stargates, yet. Besides, Sam had gone ahead to the Alpha Site, where she was set up to observe how the gate reconstructed Dawn, and Dawn didn't want to disappoint her.

* * *

Dawn did a quick inventory of herself as she stepped out of the gate. Clothes fit: check; breasts: check; short hair: check. Everything seemed to be in order. She could see Colonel Carter looking at her from behind a control console. "So, how do I look?"

"You look good," said Sam. "Back to normal. Just give me a second here…" She typed something quickly on her keyboard, and then spoke into a microphone. "Dr. Summers came through just fine, Sir. It looks like it worked."

"Good," General O'Neill's voice said from a speaker. "Then get her back here. Buffy is looking impatient."

"Yessir!" said Colonel Carter. "We'll be coming back in a couple of minutes. I just need to make a copy of my data to bring with us."

"Very well," said General O'Neill. "SGC out!" The wormhole collapsed in the Stargate.

Dawn looked around the Alpha Site's gate room while she waited for Sam. There was really nothing to indicate that she was on another planet: it was just another windowless room. She wondered if the SGC got a volume discount on all the grey paint that it bought. This room was a little bigger than the gate room on Earth, and it didn't have a separate control room. She wandered over to take a look at the DHD. She was now intimately familiar with its inner workings, and she'd seen models of them during her training, but this was the first time that she'd ever seen a real one, from the outside. Somehow it seemed less impressive than she had expected.

Carter popped a crystal out of her console, and stuck it in her pocket. "Okay, I'm done." She held her hand out toward the DHD. "You want to do the honours?"

"Sure." Dawn punched Earth's address into the DHD. She watched the inner ring of the gate spin, feeling the power in it growing as each chevron engaged. She felt the shock as the last chevron locked, and the wormhole splashed open.

Carter punched her IDC into the GDO strapped to her forearm. She waited for the green light to flash on it, indicating that her signal had been received, and that the iris was open. She waved Dawn toward the gate. "After you."

This time Dawn didn't do anything as she entered the gate. She let it transport her across the light years back to Earth without any interference from the Key.

She could see everyone looking at her when she stepped out onto the ramp in the SGC. She spread her arms, and spun around. "See! All grown up again! Nothing to it!"

Buffy was waiting in the gate room for her. "You look great Dawn, but um…" She looked down toward Dawn's feet. "Are you expecting a flood?"

"What?" Dawn looked down. Her pant legs were still rolled up, rising almost half way up her calves now. She quickly bent over to roll them back down, before shooting an accusing look at Carter. "Why didn't you warn me?"

"Sorry," said Sam. "I didn't notice."

"Welcome back Dr. Summers," said General O'Neill. "Colonel, why don't you escort her to medical."

Dawn sighed. She knew that she would have to go through that yet again. She hoped that it would be Cassie doing the physical, but she expected that Dr. Ramsey would still be supervising. At least this time he should be convinced that the whole Key thing wasn't a figment of her imagination.

* * *

She'd been through this so many times now that Dawn was starting to think that she could perform the physical examination herself. All the test results came back reading normal. She once again appeared to be a perfectly healthy twenty-four year old woman.

There was one thing that was different from her first examination: "Your scars are gone!" said Cassie.

"Yeah, well, it would have been extra work to put them back, and I never really liked wearing a bikini because of them."

* * *

"Okay Jack, I'm me again; Dr. Ramsey says I'm perfectly healthy, and has come around to believing that I'm not crazy; I can go through the gate just fine, without vanishing again on you. When can I go back to work?" asked Dawn.

"You still want to work for us?" asked Jack.

"Sure," said Dawn. "You still want that stuff from P5C-4562 translated, don't you?"

"Yeah, but now you're this all powerful Key thing."

"I'm hardly 'all powerful,' and I like it here," said Dawn. "I like the people, and I like the work. I really feel like I'm contributing, and I think that this would be the best place for me, while I figure out what the Key can do."

"Are you sure you want to stay here, Dawn," asked Buffy.

"I'm sure, Buffy. You've shown me the world, now I want to take a look at the rest of the universe."

"Um, there's part of this world that kinda wants to see you," said Willow. "Last time I talked to Kennedy she said that Xander and Faith were starting to get a little antsy about how long we've been in here, and were starting to talk about mounting a rescue mission."

Jack looked amused. "Xander struck me as someone who had more sense than that."

"Ah…maybe we should go, now," said Buffy. "We wouldn't want any of Jack's people to get hurt."

Dawn paused to think for a bit. Cheyenne Mountain would be a tough nut to crack, even for a couple of Slayers, but if Faith was here, as well as Kennedy, and probably Rona and Gabbie from Denver… "How many people did you bring?"

"Most of North America," said Buffy. "We left a skeleton watch in Cleveland, but everyone else is nearby."

"Cleveland?" asked Jack.

"Ah…favourite party town for the forces of darkness, since Sunnydale went bye-bye," said Buffy.

Dawn was busy thinking about what twenty or more Slayers might be able to do to Cheyenne Mountain's defences. "I think Buffy's right. We should get out of here before anyone does something stupid."

"We'll need transportation back into Colorado Springs," said Willow. "We came here with Jack."

"No problem," said Dawn. "My car's upstairs." She looked at Jack. "It is still upstairs, isn't it. No one decided to tow it away, while I was missing?"

"No, it should still be there," said Jack. "We hadn't officially declared you missing yet."

"Okay, so, let's get out of here, with your permission General?" asked Dawn. "I'll be back tomorrow."

"Yeah, sure, youbetcha," said Jack. "Get out of here."

* * *

Dawn used Willow's phone to call to reserve a room at the Jade Dragon before they were even out of the Mountain. At first they had said that they couldn't handle so many people on such short notice on a week night, but when Dawn got the manager on the phone, and told him in his own language that she was calling for twenty Slayers, and some of their friends, he had gone very quiet for a few seconds, and then stumbled all over himself to promise that they would open up one of their banquet rooms, and it would be ready for them when they arrived. She made a mental note to make sure that she gave them a good tip…as the rescuee, she was the one who had to pick up tab for the post rescue party. It was a good thing that the SGC paid well.

She dropped Buffy and Willow off at their hotel—the same one she had stayed in during her first visit to Colorado Springs. She wanted to continue home on her own, but Buffy was still feeling overly paranoid, and made her take Rona with her. Dawn had a quick shower, and changed into some more casual clothes before she and Rona headed out again for the Jade Dragon.

She was a little overwhelmed when she actually saw how many people there were. Nearly all the Slayers she had known from Sunnydale were there, in addition to Xander, and Andrew and some of her other friends among the Watchers. Just about the only people missing were Robin Wood, who had stayed with the Slayers watching the Hellmouth in Cleveland, and Giles, who hadn't been able to get away from England.

Dawn got passed around, exchanging hugs with everyone. She saved Xander for last. "So, what happened?" he asked, after he had let her go. "Alien abduction?"

"No, it was nothing like that," said Dawn.

"So, what was it?"

"It was just an accident. My thing and their thing kinda interacted in an unexpected way."

"Your thing?"

"Yeah…there were kinda some key issues."

"Oh…that's not good."

"It all turned out okay in the end…better than okay. I learned a lot of new stuff about myself."

"Like what?"

"Tell you later, okay?" said Dawn. "When there aren't so many people around."

* * *

The post-rescue party broke up at about midnight. Dawn was accompanied back to her apartment by Buffy, Willow, Xander, Andrew, Faith and Kennedy. They all settled into seats around her living room. "Okay, there aren't so many people here now," said Xander. "What happened?"

"I still can't talk about a lot of it," said Dawn. "I promised not to tell anyone about what's going on in the Mountain. They were very clear about that. If I talk about some things, there could be a very quick trial for treason, and then they lock me up and throw away the key."

"We didn't promise anything," said Willow.

"What?" asked Dawn.

"Me and Buffy didn't promise not to tell anyone anything about what they told us. They never even asked us not to talk about it."

"They didn't?"

"Nope," said Buffy. "They didn't say a word about us not talking."

"So, what happened to Dawn?" asked Xander.

Willow and Buffy told everyone about the Stargate, with frequent interruptions from Andrew saying "That is so cool!" and one or two from Xander as well. Andrew wasn't nearly as bad as he had been, but he was still a geek at heart. When they got to the part about Dawn disappearing when she entered the Stargate, she took over and told Faith, Kennedy and Andrew about the Key: how the Order of Dagon had created her from it, and changed everyone's memories.

"Wait a minute!" said Faith. "That means that I never met you until I came back to Sunnydale to help fight the First."

"Uh-huh," said Dawn.

"So all those times you've guilted me over things I did before that…they never happened!"

"Well, not exactly the way you remember them, anyway. I guess I wasn't really there that time you held Mom and me hostage, but you still did that to Mom."

"Yeah, I guess I did…but it's still really freaky to think about."

Xander grinned at her. "Been there myself."

"We all have," said Buffy, "but now we gotta figure out what we're going to do about it."

"I'm going back," said Dawn. "If they'll have me."

"Dawn—"

"No, Buffy. I'm doing this. It's where I belong."

"I don't trust them."

"You had one bad experience, ten years ago. The SGC is nothing like the Initiative."

"Now. What happens after the next election, if the new President decides to hand them over to the NID?"

"If that happens, then I'll deal with it," said Dawn. "I'm not a little girl who needs to be protected from the big bad world anymore. I haven't been for years."

"But—"

"No 'buts'! I'm doing this. It's where I'm needed."

"We need you too."

"I'm still going to be living here in Colorado," said Dawn. "I'm not moving off the planet—at least not permanently—but there are things I can do out there."

"Like what?"

"The Key doesn't just belong to the Earth. It belongs to the universe. There are things out there…"

"What things."

Dawn grinned, reminded of what she'd thought the first time she'd heard of the Wraith. "Would you believe space vampires?"

"What?"

"There are these things out there, that suck the life force out of people." Dawn saw the expression on Buffy's face. "Nothing you need to worry about, they aren't even in this galaxy."

"Dawn, I wish you'd give this some more thought."

"What do you think I was doing, all the time I was stuck in the Stargates?" asked Dawn. "Buffy…Dawn Summers is only a small part of who I am. I happen to like this part a lot, but there's so much more to the Key. Even without the SGC, I'm going out there. It'll be easier with their help, but I can't limit myself to the Earth anymore."

That wasn't the end of it. Buffy still wanted to argue, but Dawn had made up her mind. It was nearly 2AM when she had enough, and kicked everyone out of her apartment. She wanted to get _some_ sleep before she reported back to the SGC the next morning.

* * *

_The Key didn't sleep. Dawn's body and mind needed the rest, but the Key remained aware, letting its focus roam the cosmos, seeing what had changed during the time it had been away. Not much had: 10,000 years was less than an eyeblink in the life of the universe._

_The greatest change was in the Key's perception of what it saw. It had a fresh perspective on the ebb and flow of forces that it now recognized as life spread across the galaxies. It had a name for the blight that plagued the life in the galaxy that humans had named Pegasus. It would have to do something about the Wraith. A part of the Key wanted to just exterminate them, but it hesitated. Even the Wraith had their place. There were worse things out there. There was no need to be hasty._


	16. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Dawn inhaled, taking the air of a new world into her lungs. She felt the breeze against her face, and felt its warmth. She inhaled the scents, a melange of the familiar, and the strange. The smell of forest, tinged with the aroma of unfamiliar flowers.

The sun was shining out of a deep blue sky with white fluffy clouds scattered across it. It was much warmer here than what she was used to, lately. The late autumn weather in Colorado Springs had been cool, and the SGC maintained a comfortable 70 degrees, around the clock. Here the temperature was in the 80s, and it would probably get warmer: it wasn't even noon yet. She could hear the twittering of birds in the trees, and the buzzing of insects.

It had taken nearly a week to talk the General into letting her come to P5C-4562. It had required a mixture of cajoling, begging, and outright bribery before he agreed to let her do this. She'd wound up promising to give the SGC one Key powered connection to Atlantis a week. That and a little blackmail: they really did want to get the inscriptions from this world translated, and she was still the best person for the job.

So now she was standing on a stone platform, with the Stargate behind her. Spread across the valley before her were ruins that reminded her of Chichén Itzá, in the Yucatán Peninsula. She could see at least two stepped pyramids, overgrown by the sub-tropical forest, and more mounds that might be smaller structures.

She didn't know how long she stood mesmerized by the sight, before she noticed that her companions were looking at her, with indulgent smiles on their faces. "This is just…Wow!"

"Pretty much everyone has that reaction, the first time they get to see a new world," said Colonel Carter. "My first trip off-world I was going 'Oh my god! This is so amazing!' every ten minutes for about a day."

"I still do that, at least once a day, when I'm off-world," said Lieutenant Phillips.

Dawn looked at Ry'ac. He shrugged. "I have been going through the Chappa'ai since I was a child. It is…no big deal. Now, automobiles, those are exciting."

Dawn grinned. She had seen Ry'ac drive. He owned a souped up little hot rod that he drove with reckless abandon. He'd passed her a few times on the road that led up to the Mountain. If ever given the choice, she'd rather let a Slayer drive her, than get in a car being driven by him.

"Enough sight seeing," said Colonel Carter. "Ry'ac, take point, Phillips, you have our six. Dr. Summers, you're with me." She, and the rest of SG-2, all drew their machetes, and moved toward the steps that led down to a path that was mostly overgrown by weeds, and young saplings. Ry'ac started to hack a trail for them.

Dawn didn't have a machete. In its place she carried her second best sword, which she also drew. She followed Carter onto the path. It was time to get to work.

**

The End 

**


End file.
